Composer

Southampton City Art Gallery
13 September 2018 - 12 January 2019

Le Brun's work is characterised by directness of touch and luminosity of colour, his interest in light and space perhaps the influence of growing up on the south coast.

"Since the 1970s he has been producing paintings that defy categorisation but which are ...possessed of an energy and drama at odds with the irony and theoretical baggage common to most British contemporary art." Digby Warde-Aldam, The Week, July 2018

For Le Brun, the process of painting itself involves an intrinsic duality: ‘cover, uncover, discover –this is the essence of painting’s truth.’

These diptychs and single paintings are a direct continuation from his series of prints, Composer (2017), which explore the musical form of distinct yet related movements, and the essentially layered structure of both painting and music.

Christopher Le Brun and Tim Marlow in conversation

Southampton City Art Gallery, Tuesday 20 November 2018, 1.30-2.30pm

TM: There's often been analysis, there's very articulate writing about the relationship between art and music, between abstract painting and music. Was music, and is music still, a kind of liberation for you in relationship to your art? I ask you that just because your art is often, now, talked about in terms of music and I wonder if that starts to jar in any way? You called the show, Composer, so you're in some ways drawing on it aren't you?

CLB: What I'm referring to, is not a one-to-one translation between the two. When still at school, I remember taking out small pocket scores from the central music library at Portsmouth Guildhall, in particular the score of Pelléas and Meélisande, by Debussy, which I'd heard and it had gripped me profoundly. I couldn't read music - but there was something going on in the translation from the note to the sound, and the spatiality of music, and the look on the page, where I felt the potential for a new type of painting.

Doubles

This group of paintings on paper were made in an intensive two-week period in January 2018. The combination of so many Doubles in one installation here demonstrates the sheer sense of possibility that the working method opened up.

Painting onto discarded proofs from a series of woodcut prints, the pre-existing images gave an underlying structure to enable further free improvisation of colour and pattern.

Despite the strong surface design everywhere you sense how the foundation layer of each print subtly shows through to influence the final work. In some cases, the woodcut is left exposed, and in others obscured to ghostly form by over-painting.

As well as being painted in layers, the Doubles consist of juxtaposing complete paintings vertically in pairs. It is remarkable how quickly the eye assimilates apparently disruptive composition into new unities, and so multiplies the potential expressive effect. The result is to enhance and promote the pleasures of looking and discovery.

TM: How did you hit upon the actual formal structure, the format for the Doubles?

CLB: It’s relatively simple. These paintings were made over the proofs of woodcuts. Because they were already saturated with paint they made a good receptive surface for painting. So, I would take them back into the studio and work on them, and to save room, I pinned them one above the other on the wall. Immediately each pair of them started, not exactly speaking, but they started having a ‘combination effect’ which was unexpected. And I found that I was not only tolerating the difference, but interested and intrigued by it. They just started arriving without needing any particular input from me - in terms of organisation - other than keeping the process going.

The Madness of Tristram, 2018, 220.5 x 170 cm

For further information please contact Lisson Gallery
All images copyright Christopher Le Brun DACS 2020