Matthew Hawtin

 

 

 







Torqued Series 2017

The Torqued Series started in 1998 with the introduction of the ‘Torqued Paintings’. This was an investigation into the basic principles of painting - line, shape, colour and form - through the use of custom-built stretcher frames that ‘torque’ the painting surface. In recent developments to this series the wooden frame has been constructed with no perpendicular sides to create a new and dynamic shape with resulting torqued surface. This abstract frame leads the painting series through explorations of colour, size and materials to continually push the work forward.

This continued evolution of work bought about a new variant of the series in 2009. The ‘Torqued Panels’ emerged out of the desire to remove the physical structure of the paintings (i.e. the stretcher frame), and to focus more intently on only surface. Fiberglass panels and custom mounting brackets were chosen to achieve painted torqued surfaces in varying sizes, shapes and colours that seem to ‘float off the wall’, giving them a weightlessness and presence apart from conventional paintings.

This lightness of form is also explored in the new corner works, a piece in development for four years. It is a physical object that contours to the angled meeting point of a room creating it’s own ambiguous curved space. The corner piece inhabits an area of a room usually devoid of interference yet it’s through intervention that something new exists – a colourful but quiet entity cornered for consideration.

Although each series has it’s own technical demands, they all live in aesthetic parallel that blur the line between artistic disciplines. There is a determination to continually push the work forward through aesthetic variations, technical refinements and experimenting with new materials. Within this forward trajectory there is an overall vision to create art that is ‘other-worldly’ and in a sense, futuristic. A looking towards an aesthetic not yet seen or fully understood - a desire to go where no one has gone before.

Torqued Series 2017