Chris Ashley
Posted on April 2, 2008
Filed Under What's New |
Chris isone of my favourite artists for many reasons. This morning I picked this snippet up from him via this blog post.
“I think that abstraction prevents you from fully entering a fiction. A picture is a fiction. Abstraction keeps you away from that fiction and gives you a means of approaching a narrative in an analytical manner….
Certainly the shapes in these early paintings seem like actors. Actors with fragmented bodies; lost wraiths. Such theatrical metaphors are inherent in American painting: Rothko wrote in 1947, I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in the pictures are the performers. They have been created from the need for a group of actors who are able to move dramatically without embarrassment and execute gestures without shame.”(Sperone Westwater: Jonathan Lasker: the dialectics of touch )
Chris:
“….the origins of the work are really based in recording memory, story, place, nature, color and space, the need to have a regular art practice during a time when a studio practice is difficult to maintain, my interest (commitment? belief? desire?) in abstract painting (a kind of romantic minimalism, I guess). I’ve learned over three year’s time the potential of the weblog as a personal work space, a time-based portfolio, that is a place of production, exhibition, and archiving, being both an individual space and a node on a network(s).”
I’ve had a similar conversation with Chris. His work introduces chronology into aesthetics. I prefer chronology to “labour”. Any serious artist works hard but Chris is the only one I know that draws chronology into the heart of what he does. It makes me think about all the other people for whom time is a labour and the struggle many of us have with relating our use of time to pleasure. 
This is the original html inkjet print of a piece we have in the gallery Figure, Head, Rock, Tree, 2007. We have a single 42″ print. If you like it get in touch and of course follow Chris over at Chrisashley.net.
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