WORK OF THE WEEK: Ian Stephenson, Progressive plane: blue 59, 1959
Ian Stephenson
Progressive plane: blue 59, 1959
Painted collage on board
Framed: 60.5 x 60 x 2 cm / 1ft 11 ⅞ x 1ft 11 ⅝ x ¾ in.
Ian Stephenson (1934-2000) trained at King's College, Durham, from 1951-56, later teaching at the University alongside Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton. His work was shown in a one-man exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (1977) and is included in the collections of the Tate, the Arts Council, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, and the British Council. In 2006, Stephenson's work was exhibited at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea and the Baltic, Gateshead. The New Art Centre gave Ian Stephenson his first solo show in London in 1962 and has continued to exhibit his work since.
Ian Stephenson’s work is mesmerising and immersive. He experimented with scale, depth, form and function, painting thousands of tiny dots in constellations that float over mixed media surfaces such as boards and palettes. In 1966 Stephenson's work was included by Michelangelo Antonioni in his seminal film Blow-Up.
“All of painting is camouflage, not least of all by means of subject matter whatever the sentiment. It is within the freaked skin of camouflage that the art resides. […] Overlapping and obliterated. Oblivion. Such is the practice of palimpsestial painting.”
Progressive plane: blue 59 is exhibited as part of our current exhibition Essence, in the Gallery and Orangery at Roche Court Sculpture Park.
Edmund de Waal, Last Things, Essence installation view.
Progressive plane: blue 59 installed in the Artist's House