Bridget Riley: New Paintings and Gouaches
Timothy Taylor Gallery and Karsten Schubert are delighted to announce an exhibition of new paintings and gouaches by internationally acclaimed painter Bridget Riley. This exhibition will be the first time Riley has exhibited in the UK since her retrospective at Tate Britain in 2003. Since that time Riley has been working on large canvases celebrating the ‘pleasures of sight’ (Riley). In the vibrancy of their colours these works may reflect the brilliant light of the South of France where she spends three months each year. However, nature is not the starting point for the artist as is often a common misconception. From the black and white work of the early 60’s, through her coloured stripe paintings known as ‘The Egyptian Series’, to the undulating colour paintings of the present day, Riley has been concerned with the development of a visual language that echoes, by way of abstraction, sensations which cannot be done justice to, she believes, in figurative painting today.
‘Please would be very shocked indeed if the world itself was as dead in its appearance as they seem to expect a painting to be.’
Bridget Riley
Riley constructs a plastic pictorial space between the canvas and the viewer. From the spatial relationships she creates through juxtaposition of a carefully selected palette emerge movement and vibrations. These trigger in the spectator certain visual memories and feelings. In these new paintings Riley pushes her exploration of colour and spatial relationships even further, stimulating the viewers’ senses and evoking a range of experience from natural phenomena to spiritual states of elation.
‘Properly treated, formalism is not an empty thing but a potentially very powerful answer to the spiritual challenge.’
Bridget Riley
It is fitting that this exhibition should take place in 2006, the year that Riley celebrates her 75th birthday, for it will present monumental canvases and a selection of gouaches that show the artist continuing to break new ground. Still innovating and pushing boundaries, Riley challenges the viewer with an abundance of colour and sensation using a rich palette of yellows, reds, blues, magentas, greens, and lilacs. In this exhibition we see evidence of a master in her field who has influenced a generation of artists from Damien Hirst to Jim Lambie.