NYAB Event - Paul Edmunds "Pitch"

Paul Edmunds "Pitch"

RH Gallery

This event has ended.

RH Gallery presents the American debut solo exhibition for South African artist Paul Edmunds. Edmunds’ latest works are a collection of abstract pencil drawings and a sculpture. Edmunds uses line or edge to explore visual correspondents for music and its constituent parts resulting in intricate labyrinthine abstractions that relate to pitch, tone, timbre and stereo. This series has roots tracing back to Kandinsky whose practice was centered on a process of abstraction, which relied heavily on concepts borrowed from musical theory.

The works vary little in scale and are largely monochromatic, affording an undistracted experience of limited variables. While each piece is carefully planned and executed, the lines also perform on their own: they cross, congregate and avoid each other in unpredictable ways.

Like music, the works reward and thwart expectations, as overlaid lines and stacked edges produce tone, timbre, volume and contrast. Each line and cluster of lines reflects decay, constructs echoes and reverberations and produces harmony and dissonance. Areas of silence contrast with places of tension. Some of this is planned and intentional, but Edmunds states “It's perhaps a bit romantic to suggest this, but at times, it's almost like setting the pencil lines free and seeing what they do.” Edmunds acknowledges the influence, in these works, of Sol LeWitt's wall drawings from the 1960s and 70s which he saw at Dia: Beacon while on an Ampersand residency in 2010, as well as Walter Oltmann's drawings of baskets which he became familiar with as a student.

Paul Edmunds’s work is about process as much as form, with Edmunds pouring countless hours into his works. He chooses discipline, repetition, and attention to detail as the cornerstones of his approach. From elements which are often non-linear, mostly repetitive and largely abstract, we extract or assemble meaningful experience.

Edmunds lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Born in 1970, Edmunds has exhibited extensively in South Africa since graduating from the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg in 1995. Edmunds has had solo exhibitions at Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town; João Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town; The Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet, Cape Town; NSA Gallery, Durban and the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Group shows include Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Production Marks: Geometry, psychology and the electronic age, National Arts Festival at the Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg and Exhibition of Cape Town artists, Canberra Institute of Art, Canberra, Australia. Edmunds work is represented in numerous prestigious collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Carnegie Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK; Gencor Collection, South Africa and Sasol Art Collection, South Africa.

Media

• Drawing
• Sculpture

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