020309: Enthralling boredom

Galerie Hubert Winter: Stephen Skidmore Enthralling boredom It could well be that visitors to Hubert Winter’s gallery will be caught yawning. At first sight, paintings of blurred facades, trees, and streets strike one as being rather boring. But after taking a closer look at Stephen Skidmore’s seemingly old-fashioned paintings they are surprisingly appealing. All of the paintings of this exhibition, mainly created in different tones of brown and at times brightened up by a blue door or a red car, show the view from Skidmore’s studio window in West London, misted by rain on the windowpanes. Skidmore spent five years staring out the same window onto the same street and simply painted what he saw– sounds a bit like voluntary isolation, or obsession, but it also has a lot to do with being absolutely focussed and tenacious. The windowpane, set between the eye and the view like a membrane, reveals different manifestations of rain – once as fine drops, once as arduously flowing streaks – and seems to set free as much as it transfigures. Skidmore’s focus varies from painting to painting: a façade; an extract of the façade, hugely enlarged – an irritating moment. On some paintings a bare tree stands in the way, sometimes everything dissolves. But all of his paintings, which are devoid of people, all convey the feeling as if someone was on the search, but: for what? They tend to remind of Michelangelo Antionioni’s “Blow Up”, - the difference being that there is no crime to be detected in Skidmore’s paintings. Amazing, how exciting boring paintings can be. Nina Schedlmayer Galerie Hubert Winter 1070 Vienna, Breite Gasse 17, until 07.03.09 www.galeriewinter.at

Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville

020309

Galerie Hubert Winter
1070 Wien, Breite Gasse 17
Tel: +43 1 524 09 76, Fax: +43 1 524 09 76 9
Email: office@galeriewinter.at
http://www.galeriewinter.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr: 11-18h
Sa 11-14h

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