ONCE
IS NOT ENOUGH # 3.
Since painting, because
of its signs or means of imitation can be combined only in space, must
relinquish all representations of time...
___Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing.
Painting is an object ‘that does
not shrink from impossible tasks’.[1]
One such task in opposition to Lessing’s insistence that painting observes the
limitations of its medium is its attempt to depict and/or represent time. To
describe painting as a static image, one that does not move, is an over
simplification, but one that nevertheless provokes an admiration for painting’s
long history of attempting to overcome the limitations of its inertia, its
ability to refer to time, both on its surface and of the world beyond its
edges.
The world beyond painting’s edge
in this instance is a 1969 publication that catalogues the world of art. The
paintings that constitute the series shown are
repetitions of images from Discovering
Art - five colour plates that present works by Matisse, Giotto, Bruegel, Le
Corbusier and Watteau.
This body of work does not
confine itself to the temporal conditions of the static image - specifically
time in painting, but examines the
ways in which repetition temporalises the space of their encounter. This is
achieved by placing the paintings into what Quin describes as an open
labyrinth, a maze like structure without walls. Paintings are set into motion
in relation to one another. This motion is an equivalence of the turned pages
of a book - an encounter where an audience writes their own book as Giotto is
brought into dialogue with Matisse, and Bruegel with Le Corbusier, relative to
the spectator’s spatial location within the gallery space.
Quin’s interest in the play
between repetition and difference - of time and space, questions the long held
assumption that painting is a static image.
[1] Adrian Searle, extract from
“Unbound”, in Unbound: Possibilities in
Painting, curated by Adrian Searle and Greg Hilty, London: Hayward Gallery,
1994, pp. 13-17.
