Simon Bill
14 Sep - 17 Nov 2007
SIMON BILL
"Odd"
On September 14, 2007, we will inaugurate from 7.00-9.00 p.m. the show Odd with works by the British painter Simon Bill (*1958). Bill studied at the St. Martins School of Art and graduated 1985 at the Royal College of Art in London. In 2001 he was one of the nominees of the reknown Beck's Future Price in London. We show 15 of his oval paintings from 2000 and '01 as well as 2006 and '07, the later ones where done after a longer break and after the family had relocated to Sheffield in Yorkshire.
Simon Bill's paintings are oval, because the artist – as he explains laconically – does not like corners and because it is "dead easy not having corners". In addition to that he says that everything "started when I pulled this round bit of wood out of a skip". As it is true so often, we do not need to believe what the artist is saying with the aim of building up a legend. Instead of making it just easy for him, he creates with the oval and its particular form and size the only constants of his œuvre. And only with this constant his confident and witty play with forms, colors and contents becomes evident. This is because Bill varies within his self-set rules all possible languages regarding content and formal elements and he is guiding us towards the reflection of what constitutes (or can constitute) painting. Every single work is a question mark, an attempt to find out what conditions painting – and the answer to this question. In the light of an experiment that goes in all kinds of directions, the application of different technical and pictorial means that often cannot be related to traditional ideas of high art cannot astonish. For instance, Bill uses, besides "normal" materials like oil, undercoat, gloss, emulsion eggshell and acrylic, materials like hairs, woods, or rivets. For him, the conglomerate of materials is a reason for the freshness of his works: "The components don't look like they lend themselves necessarily to the end result."
With these non-necessary, but erratically used means, Bill creates works that are given – after the fact of having been painted – ironical and laconic titles. For example in the case of Hang the Kaiser, a painting of 2007, that parallels the German piked helmet of WWI with the cubist language of forms existing at the same time. Or in the case of Quorn (2007): "Quorn" is the trade name for an industrially manufactured food, rich of proteins, from fermented moulds. The mixture that has a low level of cholesterol is enriched with vitamins and minerals and it is converted with protein from chickens as bonding agent in a patented procedure to a vegetarian butcher set. Even though the description of this Ersatz-meat sounds horrifying and even though its name seems to allude to "porn" it is represented in a painting by painted worms in gray and green on a neon-orange ground. Together with this representation, the work cites the all-over-strategies of Jackson Pollock and the discussion in the art world of the old figure-ground-problem that has been important since the early 60ies and Clement Greenberg's ideas of the flatness of a painting. One last title that shall be mentioned here is Chesterfield (2006); that is an allusion to the famous sofas produced in the city of Chesterfield. For these sofas, buttons are used, that seem to be represented by the painting. However, the colors of the painting are far away of being true to the sofas and the button can be seen only on a small part of the work. In addition to that, one needs to know the "story behind the title" in order to understand the allusion. All these elements serve as a proof for the fact that the titles are given by chance, without any kind of necessity born out of representational reasons. What is important is the painterly product as an artwork.
"Odd"
On September 14, 2007, we will inaugurate from 7.00-9.00 p.m. the show Odd with works by the British painter Simon Bill (*1958). Bill studied at the St. Martins School of Art and graduated 1985 at the Royal College of Art in London. In 2001 he was one of the nominees of the reknown Beck's Future Price in London. We show 15 of his oval paintings from 2000 and '01 as well as 2006 and '07, the later ones where done after a longer break and after the family had relocated to Sheffield in Yorkshire.
Simon Bill's paintings are oval, because the artist – as he explains laconically – does not like corners and because it is "dead easy not having corners". In addition to that he says that everything "started when I pulled this round bit of wood out of a skip". As it is true so often, we do not need to believe what the artist is saying with the aim of building up a legend. Instead of making it just easy for him, he creates with the oval and its particular form and size the only constants of his œuvre. And only with this constant his confident and witty play with forms, colors and contents becomes evident. This is because Bill varies within his self-set rules all possible languages regarding content and formal elements and he is guiding us towards the reflection of what constitutes (or can constitute) painting. Every single work is a question mark, an attempt to find out what conditions painting – and the answer to this question. In the light of an experiment that goes in all kinds of directions, the application of different technical and pictorial means that often cannot be related to traditional ideas of high art cannot astonish. For instance, Bill uses, besides "normal" materials like oil, undercoat, gloss, emulsion eggshell and acrylic, materials like hairs, woods, or rivets. For him, the conglomerate of materials is a reason for the freshness of his works: "The components don't look like they lend themselves necessarily to the end result."
With these non-necessary, but erratically used means, Bill creates works that are given – after the fact of having been painted – ironical and laconic titles. For example in the case of Hang the Kaiser, a painting of 2007, that parallels the German piked helmet of WWI with the cubist language of forms existing at the same time. Or in the case of Quorn (2007): "Quorn" is the trade name for an industrially manufactured food, rich of proteins, from fermented moulds. The mixture that has a low level of cholesterol is enriched with vitamins and minerals and it is converted with protein from chickens as bonding agent in a patented procedure to a vegetarian butcher set. Even though the description of this Ersatz-meat sounds horrifying and even though its name seems to allude to "porn" it is represented in a painting by painted worms in gray and green on a neon-orange ground. Together with this representation, the work cites the all-over-strategies of Jackson Pollock and the discussion in the art world of the old figure-ground-problem that has been important since the early 60ies and Clement Greenberg's ideas of the flatness of a painting. One last title that shall be mentioned here is Chesterfield (2006); that is an allusion to the famous sofas produced in the city of Chesterfield. For these sofas, buttons are used, that seem to be represented by the painting. However, the colors of the painting are far away of being true to the sofas and the button can be seen only on a small part of the work. In addition to that, one needs to know the "story behind the title" in order to understand the allusion. All these elements serve as a proof for the fact that the titles are given by chance, without any kind of necessity born out of representational reasons. What is important is the painterly product as an artwork.