Chris Gollon: Works on Khadi Paper: Viewing Room

All the above works are reproduced in art historian Tamsin Pickeral’s excellent book on Chris Gollon’s life and work Humanity in Art.  As with everything Chris Gollon touched in terms of painting or printmaking, he was always quick to absorb existing practices and then take them somewhere new, developing his own innovations.  In ‘Head’ he delights in making the image seem like some ancient fragment of a painting from another time, helped by the ragged texture of the paper and the fact he does not paint straight edges, yet this woman has a modern consciousness. Using Khadi paper,  he could immediately see the various effects  this rough ancient paper could give him.

With the ‘Flute Player’, he applies the paint much thinner so there is deliberate paint shrinkage, giving this work the look of an ancient mural, as if it is slightly flaking in parts. Yet with a modern twist, he paints his signature at a short remove.

“Chris and I would often talk about the books of Hermann Hesse, in particular Steppenwolf, Klingsor’s Last Summer, and the collection of short stories Strange News From Another Star. In the latter, which Chris recommended I read, in two of the stories Hesse subverts our notion of time, with a mysterious and hypnotic flute player pulling us away like the Pied Piper, into a dreamlike world of the subconscious or of magic, where anything can happen. This always appealed to Chris, and he often used mysterious flute players in his paintings, hinting at alternative realities. Not unlike Hesse, Chris Gollon’s imaginative paintings continue to subvert conventional thinking and our notions of what is real.”

David Tregunna

In the third painting At Le Bal (II),  we see Chris Gollon’s interest in both film and music. Ettore Scola’s award-winning film without dialogue Le Bal inspired a whole series of paintings 2006-2007. The film charts  six decades inside the same Parisian dance hall, up until the 1970s. Brilliantly choreographed, with the same characters, who never age, but the times, dances and fashions and politics change, and loves are lost and won. Gollon was very taken with this visually beautiful spectacle, strewn with broken hearts, sensuality, and an array of human hubris and foibles. In this work, he applies the paint very thickly, building up layers as he would on canvas, creating wonderful matt, creamy flesh tones. Yet the incredible texture of this stiff hand-made rag paper remains. This sheet was black, which meant Chris Gollon could dispense with his usual practice of making the image first in grisaille, using black paint, since half the work was done by the paper.