Viewing from 17.15
Jonathan Meuli in conversation with Professor Phillip Lindley from 17.30 to 18.30
Reception from 18.30 to 19.00
Jonathan Meuli’s abstract paintings aim to transform perceived reality by penetrating to its inner essence. In this sense his views coincide with those of Brancusi: ‘That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.’ Meuli trained at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford, from which he graduated in 1982 and has been based in Glasgow for the last twenty years. The exhibition at Wolfson is a selection of works spanning his whole career.
Some of his most important abstract studies in watercolour or gouache as well as a number of significant oil paintings are on show, many for the first time. The goal of this exhibition is to trace the origins of Meuli’s profound interest in abstraction and the routes through which the artist has come to produce his current large, chromatically intense, abstract oil paintings. It reveals how he transforms what he sees into works which refer inwards, rather than representing the world ‘naturalistically’, and how his wide-ranging interests in other art-forms, such as opera and dance, poetry and prose, are reflected in his paintings. For the past four years, he has developed large, often turbulent, works which have a metaphorical connection with scientific research. Other paintings have a meditative stillness and balance.
This event is part of WOLFSON EXPLORES | Transformation |
