Word: ablow
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...work I’m doing here is a pure geometric matter,” Ablow says. “I am mainly concerned with the character of the objects and their relationships. They are very ordinary things, but I invent the order to put on them. There is nothing very impressive about them, but as they are set on the table, they take on a certain gravitas...
...work most resembles that of Giorgio Morandi in the 1940s and 1950s. Morandi, called the father of the contemporary still life, relentlessly painted the same enamel bottles and china bowls for decades, using a palette that never wandered more than a shade away from gray. Like Morandi, Ablow is concerned with exploiting a pictorial brand of truth, discovering something universal in the shape of insipid junk...
From the tin box to the ceramic jar, Ablow always targets similar subject matter, and often from memory. Although Ablow says most of his work is purely visual, with no aspirations to greater social or metaphysical meaning, his objects sometimes assume a more personal significance. In “Waiting,” which was conceived as a memento mori for a dead friend, a ponderous swath of fabric slumps above a somber procession of empty cobalt cups...
...Ablow cites artists Fra Angelico and Piero as some of his greatest influences, and one can feel the quiet and stable Italian Renaissance sensibilities at work in his paintings. However, Ablow’s paintings are not all serene harmony and immaculate balance. There is a considerable amount of distortion and tension as well: tabletops swerve away from the horizon, cups tip up against the laws of perspective, and drapes fall in completely unnatural ways. In “Studio Dialogue” a jar is partially-hidden, as its left side has no visible correlation with its asymmetrical right...
Like Cézanne, Ablow toys with the construction of space. Ablow paints objects on the brink of chaos and objects that appear as if they could collapse on themselves any moment. Coupled with their stability, this tension is what brings the viewer back, spell-bound, to Ablow’s work...