Stuart Watters | Flatland

Delve into the world of Stuart Watters as he cuts and thwarts the picture plane.

His latest exhibition Flatland, opens Monday 4 May in a myriad of painterly forms and linear projections.

Only his second solo show at Gallery 9, the artist is definitely making his mark. In this latest series of works, Watters’ brushstrokes strike across the canvas with a bounding energy that borders on limitless chaos. It is hard not to get drawn up into the artist’s evidently passionate foray to explore the potential of surface and composition.

Geometric shapes layer across and between the foreground and background, building a tension between the two, and evoking a pictorial drama. From first glance it is hard not to balk at the disorderly works, yet it is this energy that draws the eye into to contemplate Watters’ abstract depictions of the complex nature of the world.

Whilst each work holds its own, together Flatland weaves a narrative of Watters’ dystopian vision. As the artist notes “The title FLATLAND is a sly reference to the consequences of environmental vandalism and the destruction to civilisation caused by merciless warfare. The unfolding pictorial drama is also an ironical nod to flatness as the endgame of high modernism.”

With Stuart Watters new forms appear within an old format of painting, whatever your take, there is a magnetism in the artist’s gesture that speaks to the eye.

EXHIBITION
Stuart Watters: Flatland
4 – 28 May
Gallery 9 

Courtesy the artist and Gallery 9