screen grab

(C) David Foster 2010

Everything until the memory ran out.

Nights are drawing in.

Gerhard Richter: Portraits

Gerhard Richter: Portraits
National Gallery, London
27 February - 31st May 2009

Razor sharp focus. It’s a prerequisite of the photography industry. The images that surround us offer the eye the illusion of every detail. For this reason viewing Gerhard Richter’s Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery challenges the eye.

The hallmark of Richter’s portraits are paintings that subordinate the photographic image for very different ends. The canvases offer the shapes of figures which on closer inspection break up into flat layers of paint. Richter’s most striking technique, which is in evidence throughout this retrospective, is to rake a brush across the damp canvas smudging the tones together. The result gives an appearance of automatism to his images; As if they had been produced by a period photocopier or printer. These surfaces are Richter’s tool to inhibit the viewer’s attempt at interpretation. From a photograph we expect a copy of reality. However, here the viewer is required to consider a number of visual contradictions: paintings that appear to be photos, figures that remain illusive, canvases that have the appearance of mass produced objects.

The exhibition contains further illuminating contrasts in Richter’s work. The atrium of the gallery is filled with Richter’s monumental 48 Portraits a work which dryly offers us a canon of great white males looking down on the viewer. Take the elevator to the upper galleries and you rise up through the ranks. However, the prevalent subject matter here is not the iconic image but the family portrait. This is an object that he describes as a modern ‘devotional picture.’ With these images Richter offers the viewer a chance to glimpse into personal relationships while emphasizing their conceal realities. Richter portrays his daughters in a way that both captures personality and side steps it by hiding the subject’s face of using an unusual angle. In a small self-portrait Richter appears to be emerging from deep inside the picture. Coming into focus, but looking away from the camera as if to resist its gaze.

The final surprise is Richter’s installation of a mirror in the gallery as the exhibition’s final work. Richter compares the mirror to one of his paintings, suggesting that it offers a semblance of the thing without showing us the object itself. Seeing oneself staring into the mirror with the traffic of the gallery behind offers exactly this experience. It reminds me of Velasquez’s Las Meninas; suddenly we’re

The 76

Angry and frustrated by London Transport I aimlessly start snapping from the top deck. The result is immediately captivating.

I had been trying to work out a way of visualising London for ages. And suddenly here it is. Monotonous chaos in the patterns of grey paving stones. Concealed figures. A view combining surveillance and vulnerability. Just photos from my everyday life.

I can already imagine a number of way I can develop such a series of images. I think I will probably start a London blog to accommodate them. I'll post the link when I get it sorted.

Dream Landscapes (2)

19/10/08

rock of ages
read the fall out
in the bar:

travelling on from vienna
'Where do you want to go?'
'To a city with a Cathedral.'

sitting on bar stools
bacon & eggs
translations
kissing together
routemaster through Islington


*



8/10/08

I look at them
I thought they were screaming at me

(knock. knock.)

the cyclonic version
'I know'
it gets confused



*



9/1/09

Obama on the radio
resigned yesterday.

whatever. whatever. whatever.

warms up when. glue in the bike shop.
need some time. jumpy end.

zip lines. miniature horses.
waves on the coast of Venezuela
the woman carry goods on their shoulders

James in a model village
dad calls it over
loyalty card
smells strangest at my home.

32 Postcards

Cacao live at the placard headphones night in Cafe Oto, Dalston. My headphone splitter was playing up, but it still sounded great.

Follow the link for field noise, postcard nostalgia and some nice vectors.
http://quotesque.net/cacao/32postcards.html

Cheers Anil and Miranda.

Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard.

Gerhard Richter 4900 Colours: Version II, 2007
Enamel paint on Aludibond
49 Panels, each 97 × 97 cm
La Collection de la Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création
© 2008 Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter:

4900 Colours: Version II

Serpentine Gallery, London

23^rd September – 16^th November 2008

German painter and photographer Richter is exhibiting 49 paintings at the Serpentine which are composed of hundreds of blocks of flat colour. They were composed by a computer programme which calculated created an entirely chance configuration of tones. The gallery note informs us that a dice was then rolled by Richter to choose the orientation and positioning of the works in the gallery.

Standing in the central space of the Serpentine the blocks of colour give me the sense of being in a nursery. The statistical operations they represent lead me back to thinking about the power of number crunching data to rip huge wormholes in national economies when put into the hands of investment bankers. It also reminds me of a title: ‘Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard.’

Richter’s dice operation makes me think about Stéphane Mallarmé rich and strange poem. I don’t pretend to understand it but I looked it up this evening and was stunned again by its beauty. It's criminal to try and typeset it or translate extracts out of context so here are a few pages from the original French booklet:

A THROW OF THE DICE



NEVER

even when cast in the eternal circumstance

of a shipwreck's depth

You can see the full image of the book here:

http://www.my-os.net/blog/index.php?Graphisme/2006/11

The full text in French and English here:

http://www.tonykline.co.uk/

Ian Brimble, Actor, Stroke Sufferer

Ian Brimble was a actor who appeared in a number of TV dramas when in December 2005 he suffered a Stroke while shopping in London. The stroke was treated in the National hospital in Bloomsbury, London, where Ian spent two weeks in intensive care and a month in a wheelchair.

The stroke has left him with chronic disability in his left hand and Aphasia; a loss of speech and short term memory. Ian doesn't feel he can return to acting but thanks to Interact Reading Service, Ian now reads to stroke sufferers in the hospital where he was treated.

Interact Reading Service are a charity founded on the belief that a key aspect in the well being and recovery of stroke patients is mental stimulation. To achieve this Interact send professional actors into hospitals across London to read to Stroke sufferers. To find out more about their work follow the link below.

www.interactreading.org

Photo taken by David Foster in The Royal National Hospital - April 2008

Roses: small £3. large £5.

After taking this photo the woman offered me a banana. I returned later to give her a copy of the photo, but she's never been there since.

Night London

London to Newport, South Wales