DJ SIMPSON: 'If Then Else' 2007

Press Release
ARQUEBUSE is proud to present the first exhibition in Switzerland by acclaimed British artist DJ Simpson, one of today’s leading exponents of the concrete and plastic in art versus representation, narrative or metaphor. This exhibition will contrast works from 2001 with the new visual vocabulary that Simpson is exploring in more recent works. This exhibition will also mark the first time that Simpson has exhibited his drawings on paper.

Simpson directly engages with the overriding question in abstract art – how to progress beyond easel painting - by making his marks with a machine on a ground of formica on wood, an industrial material used widely in the construction industry. Using the language of painting with the techniques of drawing, he critiques the concerns that have come to us through minimalism, using readymade, lo-fi materials to make ‘ego-less’ paintings.

Issues of artistic ego are important to Simpson and give rise to an in-built conflict in the work: the transition in colour of grain as the mechanical router hits different layers of wood within the readymade material are pure chance. Yet the decisions that are made to get to this point are complex, including consideration of the various formal possibilities possible with formica - from gloss to matt or metallic - as well as both the premeditated and impulsive choices made in the drawing process with the router. The works do not obviously show the hand of their maker, yet they are necessarily the results of many distinct author-led choices.

In Everywhere and Allover and Ego Trippin’ from 2001 we are presented with the contrast between whimsical lines and seemingly effortless doodling, and the difficulties in the actual process of mechanically routing the formica panel. In the intervening years Simpson has deliberated further on his attraction to the problems
of drawing: the premeditative understanding of a line’s endpoint and its relationship in the context of other lines, versus the gestural, capricious doodle.

The concrete potentialities in Simpson’s work are now the foremost line of enquiry, changing the shape of the base support to startling formal effect. In the new Basic Reshape series, Simpson has rotated the square support to form a diamond. The usual frames of reference for the understanding of images are effectively turned on their head. No gravitational grounding is available. The viewer is left to contend simply with the lines, the colour and the form as subjects in themselves.

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'Basic Reshape No. 8' 2007, HPL on MR MDF, 170 x 170 cm (actual size: 120 x 120 cm), (A00464)

'If Then Else (Isometric) 1' 2007, Graphite on paper, 30 x 30 cm, (A00465)

'If Then Else (Isometric) 2' 2007, Graphite on paper, 30 x 30 cm, (A00466

'If Then Else (Isometric) 3' 2007, Graphite on paper, 30 x 30 cm, (A00467)

'Basic Reshape 1 (Hit Vert)' 2004, HPL on MR MDF, 170 x 170 cm, (A00239)

'Test Two' 2006, Formica on Birch plywood, 150 x 150 cm, (A00161)

Installation view, If Then Else, 2007, ARQUEBUSE, Geneva