Luke Frost: Painting in Five Dimensions
Tate St Ives
GIVEN the long history of abstraction – or non-representational – painting in the 20th century, it often comes as a surprise to discover young artists still exploring the outer, more austere reaches of such work. While artists continue to depict such conventional subjects as the figure, landscape or still life – despite the long history of such work – without critics raising an eyebrow, any carefully honed and minimalist form of work is likely to be compared unfavourably with the recent past.
Yet, at a time when many observers lament the absence or lack of interest in painting, abstraction is a form that can relate as much to our own times as any other subject. Such is the case with Luke Frost, a painter in his early 30s who has been Artist in Residence at the historic Porthmeor Studios in St Ives. Part of the residency includes an exhibition at Tate St Ives. The scheme has the laudable aim of encouraging emerging artists to develop their work and so help invigorate the artistic and cultural life of the town.
Although Frost’s work is abstract, making use of basic geometrical compositions that features thin vertical lines – what Frost calls volts – appear like highly charged strikes of electricity that discharge an element of energy into the work. Making use of solid fields of colour, built up in layers but with the surface left smooth, Frost favours rich turquoise blues, saturated reds and vibrant oranges, hues that themselves are emotionally highly charged. Some works are built to fit into corners, responding to and affected by the architecture of the room.
Rather than consider any obvious “content”, Frost explores abstract concepts that touch on contrast and balance as expressed in the relationship between the mass of colour and the narrow “volts” that disrupt and divide the space. The extent to which they please, in setting up harmonious relationships, between the various “components” is a central part of his concerns. Equally intriguing are the rhythms set up, both within each image or groups of images. At their most successful these are pleasant rather than strident, assertive rather than timid.
Frost’s compositions are shown at the same time as the work of Ben Nicholson, an artist who in the 1930s worked with low relief “paintings”, often finished in matt white. He, too, used geometrical forms – squares, rectangles and circles – shapes that ensued obvious content in favour of a formal arrangement of minimal shapes.
Yet, although both artists share a concern with the idea of “essence”, of honing and refining an art form that addresses concepts around the minimal and unembellished, they do so in very different ways. While Nicholson was influenced by modernist ideas emanating from Europe, Frost acknowledges such influential American minimalist art as Dan Flavin’s light sculptures constructed from florescent tubes and Donald Judd’s box-like sculptures – work that is unashamedly “modern”. Frost’s spare paintings combine playfulness with solemnity, fun with seriousness; they establish a “sustained irresolution” – a state of not knowing, of shifting emphasis that, much like life, refuses to be pinned down.
Emmanuel Cooper
Luke Frost: Painting in Five Dimensions continues until May 4. A neat, illustrated catalogue discusses Frost’s work
