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The Subject of Painting: re-volution in the works by Simon Birch
Its been more than half a century since painting was killed, buried and resurrected � these stages far from linear and in most cases simultaneous or ordered in reverse. To indicate that painting follows this process as a matter of fact and means of exploration is to condemn it to triteness. Sometime in the 50s, possibly beginning with Jasper Johns and his peers, art history split in its course. This latter day hydra sought out both the nature of art, and the nature of painting. The two are never necessarily at a confluence, nor do they inform each other convincingly. The separation of art and painting in the last 50 odd years alone, offers that its partnership through practitioners like Simon Birch, becomes a nascent commingling. It is partially a state of abandonment and nurturing, the unknown re-volution � or re-evolution if you like.
The works of Simon Birch spread before one like a feast of pigments. A man less involved in his practice would not be able to achieve such idiosyncratic and highly seductive surfaces. Guided by his parents, who are artists, Birch was exposed to painting at an early age. It could be a romantic suggestion that the young Simon grew up without fear or favour toward painting and art � that to develop within the environment without formal teaching constitutes a subliminal tendency to purity. What makes romance so attractive is the smallest degree of truth it reflects.
Simon�s solo show in Singapore, �The Art of Protecting Flat Surfaces�, constituted two portions of painted works and collaborative pieces with multi-disciplinarians based on his prototype canvas. It is not so much the diversity that encourages one to look further, but the candour and vivid qualities evident in the works that border on recklessness and intrigue. Painting can be a dangerous activity, beyond the toxic fumes.
The nude figures and faces, in most cases, portraits, reveal that Birch is classically inclined. The paradigm for his explorations inevitably returns to the figure and in today�s context, the �other� by reflecting one-self, one�s identity. On his canvasses where bodies appear cropped at the head and the legs, torsos are skillfully carved by flat planes, angles and textured surfaces. At a glance, works like The Corinthian and Gyromancy look visually simplistic, in the build-up of pigments, light and shadow. The results are well-defined forms that sit well in space. What is fascinating about Simon Birch is that in assembly, his paintings reveal more of his preoccupation than otherwise. Lined up in a row, his figural forms become complex redefinition of spaces, using paint alone. While the figures draw us to recognition, the flat surfaces challenge our attempts to situate them in 3-dimensional space. A line drawn is a line in evidence � but there are no lines in space � you get to the body and it turns the corner as a 3-dimensional form should and the line disappears.
Likewise, his faces and portraits involve the same dialogue � of subtlety and the obvious, of known and the unknown, of being and absence. What does representational painting do but confront and covet? The faces that Birch paints are drawn up close, dramatic, at times theatrical but always present. Yet the largeness of the canvas objectifies them into anonymity. Beyond the practice of light and dark, colour and negativity, here and there, the canvas poses questions that are disconcerting at best. What do we look at when we see a painting?
The richness of Simon�s work comes from his dedication to all his works. The careful evolution of the space is unmistakable: flat surfaces are covered with paint and thought, informed and intense. He enjoys his figures. They are subjects. Once placed on the canvas, they negotiate tensions of being, becoming and annihilation. These tensions reveal themselves in Simon�s ability to command expressive tendencies in paintwork, mathematical perspectives in representation and the orchestration of an empty theatre if you will. What emerges then is a protean consensus of thought, action and physiognomy both within and beyond the canvas.
The guise of representational painting would have you believe that subjects are the objects. Continued visual speculation however, inverts the obvious. Negative space is also being defined � we use it to tell us where something is and where it will go. In critical terms, negative space is the space that has no recognisable presence. It is a void, a deafening absence that borders on neglect and is surprisingly imposing. Much of Simon�s work breaches these boundaries. As a painter, he has to deal with the void, aside from form. In some cases, such as his triptych panels, he insinuates passage in the void with shadowy form lines. There are stamps of varying items on backgrounds of his other work � unseen from afar usually, then by tokens, made evident as one moves closer to the surface. In Simon�s work, balances of pigments and textures show in both his represented form and his act of the voids. Coloured backgrounds headily invoke the paintbrush and palette � they are ground and sky, the many bedrooms in the manor of mind.
�Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant,� Ruskin said. �Every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.�
Painting and representation may have been the redemption in Picasso, the wage in patronage, the practice in art. For Simon Birch, they invoke the Hegelian will-to-form. Such a will drives an artist to paint, while the realities of his imagination make art. Birch uses his talent to demonstrate the painting process. He invites his figures onto the surface, then shows them out. What remains is the decanted notion of lifelike: in both the nature of painting and the nature of art.
If he hasn�t yet reached this point, then he will do so one day.
Bridget Tracy Tan, MA (Hons) Art History
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