amysillman

The paintings are very soothing and it's not because of the imagery or even colour. The pleasing value of the artworks comes straight from the satin varnish I assume the artist is using. The multilayered pictures have no texture which would usually appear with this many layers. Instead we're presented with a subtle glow stroking our eyes. The weird phenomenon the shiny transparent coating produces is the different appearance of the work from different angles. What looks from the front like a dense assemblage of brush marks and colour planes, when observed from a side merges together creating a gleaming surface where single colours can no longer be differentiated yet they come into interactions with each other with a dreamy effect.
However the highlight of the show is not the paintings but the experimental animation downstairs.
It relates to Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' which from reading the synopsis seems to be a very dramatic epic poem of deaths, loves and rapes often being followed by the characters morphing into animals and plants. Vaguely understanding the poem makes watching of the animation more comprehensible and also underlines the medium's nature of fluid changes.
Still, without the contextual knowledge the video is a great hallucinatory experience flashing with different colours of manually painted ink with a layer of digital morphing creatures on top. It's hard to follow the process of its making what makes you just let go of your thoughts and sink into the animation.