Schiavo Mazzonis Gallery

Federica Schiavo gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by British artist Rory Logsdail.

The show features a series of recent white monochromatic paintings that explore the nature of the human condition and consciousness through light, form and surface. In this group of works one can neither speak of abstraction nor of figuration, counterbalanced as they are between painting and sculpture. These paintings, which are both conceptual and minimal, challenge the viewer's perception as well as conventional notions of painting. The title ‘Into the Silence' is an invitation to stillness and contemplation, a possibility to enter into an unfamiliar territory, a timeless emptiness, which has an affinity with the meticulous process that the artist has to undergo in order to obtain the exquisite and refined white surfaces and forms, realized solely through using paint in innovative new ways.

The accent placed on the interplay of light and shadow, the visible and the invisible, refers to what the artist calls "the beginning and the end of form".

‘He holds to the idea of art not as a place of representation, but as a place of transcendental experience, "a science of sensitivity." (G. Deleuze). Light and the void are the materials, which give form to his work, that create the body of his paintings' (Stella Santacatterina).

The artist's approach to his practice is not only based on purely formal research, but also places an emphasis on the human body as the primary instrument through which all experiential perception exists and through which consciousness acts.

In ‘I rest my head', a subtle almost ephemeral form that refers to the back of the head, emerges from within the canvas and exists in a space that projects beyond its normal boundaries. The painting reflects a moment of rest away from the continuous stream of thoughts.

Logsdail's works are also about balance, both in terms of an inner state and as an aesthetic quality. The concentration that the paintings demand from the viewer becomes pivotal due to the strong presence of an idea of a ‘centre' within the enclosed space of each canvas.

In fact all these works have a point of equilibrium, around which the whole space gravitates. Whether it is a circular element, horizontal or vertical, it is always the reaffirmation of a central balancing point, a bond for the viewer, between the act of looking and self observation simultaneously.

In ‘Vertical Moment' a horizontal line bisects the painting in half, through the centre, relating to the crease in the stomach area where the body bends over, a point of balance between the upper and lower body. Light interacts with this painting, with the colour and tonality of the central line subtly changing through the day from a soft black to a brilliant white, according to the orientation of the sun in relation to the surface.

Logsdail's work has a magnetic quality that draws the attention away from the wandering thoughts to their essence and then from this point of origin, to a place animated with a transparency and lightness that takes us into a truer reality, one that is immaterial, luminous and transitory, but that we nevertheless have the potential to inhabit from moment to moment.