Seit den frühen 1970er Jahren malt Sean Scully abstrakte Bilder, deren Minimalismus mit Spiritualität und einer Metaphorik von Mensch und Natur angereichert sind. Seine Kompositionen erinnern an Landschaftsformen oder architektonische Strukturen: Horizontlinien, Felsformationen, archaische Gebäude. Der Katalog dokumentiert eine Ausstellung aktueller Gemälde und Grafiken aus den Jahren 2023/2024: Die Gemälde – auf Aluminium ausgeführt, was ihnen eine schimmernde Tiefe verleiht – sind Weiterentwicklungen früherer Serien: die Walls of Light aus den 1990er Jahren, farbige Blöcke, dynamisch auf der Bildfläche gestapelt, und Landlines aus dem folgenden Jahrzehnt, mit horizontalen Schichten aus leuchtenden, dabei immer noch erdigen Farben. Dagegen bietet eine Reihe von Aquatintas und Zeichnungen, die auf einem losen netzartigen Muster basieren, durchlässige Kompositionen von visueller Zartheit.

A STATE OF BEING
(Auszug aus dem Essay von Sean Rainbird)

This presentation of Sean Scully’s recent paintings, his first solo exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin, is an ideal way to explore the artist’s current preoccupations. The works shown here – on paper, on canvas, on copper and on aluminium – are a characteristic tour de force. Outwardly recognisable as abstract works, they all carry an emotional impact.

In these late-career paintings, Scully’s fundamental vocabulary continues to consist of blocks and bars that are juxtaposed and set mainly at right angles to one another, filling the entire surface of the work. Smaller units are arranged into larger sections to form a coherent overall composition. Over four decades of refinement, Scully has explored certain compositional formats repeatedly. Earlier on, the edges between lines, stripes and blocks were more crisply defined and the layers of colours more evenly applied, one over the other. Latterly the artist has found a liberating energy in his works and now leaves more lively traces of his brushwork, sometimes only partially covering previous layers, sometimes mixing colours on the brush and sometimes creating uneven edges when painting at speed. His paintings have gained a new urgency and immediacy . . .

Structurally, Scully’s new paintings conform to compositions he first developed from the 1980s onwards. Working with stripes, bars, blocks and slabs, mainly vertical and horizontal – though there were sometimes diagonal compositions too – Scully, like Piet Mondrian before him, continues to find infinite expression within the apparent limitations of self-imposed formal constraints. Perhaps the most absorbing aspect of these new works is the freedom that Scully conveys through their making. For many years he has developed long lines of continuity, such as the twin columns of regular oblongs in his Robe series and the disruptions and novel resolutions caused by inserting ‘insets’, like windows, into the middle of paintings. He made his first Wall of Light paintings over three decades ago, the first Landline works with horizontal bands a decade later. Some of his large Doric paintings have been conceived as a group that, through their titles and muted or brighter colour combinations, take us in sequence from day into night.

Within the parameters he set himself, Scully has explored seemingly endless variations in shifting dimensions, different media, combinations of colour and changing moods. In short, the myriad responses of someone alive to the ceaseless rotation of everyday life in human relations and natural phenomena. The current exhibition exists within this ever-widening field of subject matter, as Scully finds almost limitless energy to place his art in our world, its history and our memories. Grasping hold of our attention with their vigorous brushwork and richly contrasting colours, the paintings and works on paper here radiate a powerful presence.

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In Zusammenarbeit mit Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London | Marfa