Charlotte Jackson Fine Art presents “David Simpson: Heaven and Hell,” A two-week pop-up show featuring small paintings from two series of work by David Simpson, the “Interference Paintings” and the “End of the World panel pieces.” Each series uses interference paint, containing micro particles, coated with mica, which capture light, and reflect and refract it.
The “End of the World” panels included affect the look of strange, imaginary landscapes. Simpson says that in addition to using inference paints for these works (of different colors), there is an element of indeterminacy in their making. He never plans or pre-sketches the pieces, instead letting the forms arise spontaneously. Simpson says because these works tend to evoke subject matter (however elusive) they tend to be more topical and he allows his titles (like End of Empire) to directly reference ecological or political situations of the moment, in this case, his reaction to the 2016 presidential election. However, even these rather mysterious and expressive works remain in motion, the colors shifting with the light, their roots in indeterminacy and relativity clearly evident.
Those who know Simpson’s work well will know that chimerical “Interference Paintings,” which sometimes shift subtly between tones of one color and at other times radically across the spectrum, are all created using the application of a single (thus monochrome) color of interference paint, so that the light prisms and the viewer is able to see multiple colors instead of only one. The genius of Simpson’s paintings is not only that they manage to remain indefinite–always becoming something else, always surprising–but that they simultaneously are able to be so unassumingly beautiful.
