Sunday Salon 22

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

Sunday Salon 22 | Jeremy Morgan | Resolution/Dissolution

Saturation Point Studio, 17 July 2022.

Being invited to hang paintings for a Saturation Point Sunday Salon provided a great opportunity to review work developed over the last three years in a beautifully lit, intimate project space.

Stacker series, 2019, acrylic on MDF panels, variable dimensions, max height: 36cm

I hung the earlier small-scale Stacker series as a quadtych along the longer south wall of the studio. In comparison to later works, these pieces (built up from off-cuts provided by my carpenter neighbour) now appear fairly simple – the small panels of varying height simply stacked on top of each other and embellished with smaller painted motifs to imbue them with a shared sense of instability, as if in a sequence, perhaps even related to the world of animation, or (in the rather comedic rolling or precariously balanced dots), to slapstick comedy.

Kaizen, 2020, acrylic and ‘heritage’ house paint on plywood, 61 x 33.5 cm
Internal Divine, 2021, acrylic, exterior paint and emulsion on panels, 30.5 x 26.5 cm

Works from 2019 to 2021 tend to use the energy of pure colour, with elements clearly demarcated from each other in flat, opaque, graphic space. Works such as Internal Divine and Kaizen which are also included in the show, display a link to the concerns of graphic design (a profession in which I work). Forms tend to be unequivocal and clearly defined (even if what they are describing is an equivocal, unstable or undefined state).

Ragged Right, 2021, acrylic on MDF, 32.5 x 38 cm

The use of off-cuts as substrate – materials which cock a snook at the rational world of the grid – acts as both a hindrance and challenge to a rational, ordered composition, and yet simultaneously as a foil to compositional invention. Sometimes I can arrive at a visual accommodation between elements by 'correcting' imbalance through the painted surface, for instance in a work like Ragged Right where overlaps and underlaps in the differing panel widths are echoed in painted stripes at varying points in the work, to arrive at a visual rhythm in sympathy with the physical structure. The constant tension between order/balance and instability drives the work and is hard-wired into my practice through the use of these irregularly sized inherited materials.

Quencher, Lounger, Offsetter, 2022, acrylic on plywood panels, variable dimensions, max height: 64 cm

More recently I have been exploring translucent paint applications, creating secondary and tertiary colours and forms where the spliced together base structure is out of alignment with the painted surface. Three paintings from this ongoing body, Quencher, Lounger and Offsetter, are hung on the west wall of the studio space. I think of these as open-ended ‘interims’ – caught mid-way between resolution and dissolution.

Lounger, 2022, acrylic on plywood panels, 63.5 x 52 cm

With sincere thanks to Saturation Point for the opportunity to show these works.

6-Speed Switcher, 2022, acrylic and wood paint on MDF strips, 56.5 x 35 cm

Rebounder, 2021, acrylic, emulsion on reclaimed panels, 33.5 x 29 cm

Intra-Contra, 2022, acrylic on MDF panels, 40.5 x 34.5 cm