William Turner Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Casper Brindle titled Finish & Flow.
This new exhibition catches the artist at the height of a creative burst. Working simultaneously on three bodies of work, Brindle continues to explore properties of light and how it affects our perceptions of the space around us. Brindle refers to his most familiar body of work as the Azimuth series, a nautical term where the horizon line is used to aid navigation.
These paintings reveal themselves slowly, bathed in tones that recall the magic half-light of dawn and dusk, where form and space are veiled in shimmering glimpses and murky pools, vaporous ambiguities that invite us to explore the hazy borders of perception.
These paintings evolve through a process of repeated layers of color-shifting car paints, which are then coated in resin. With their high gloss surfaces and nuanced tones, the work carries forward the undeniable genes of the Finish Fetish and Light and Space movements that grew, and continue to thrive, in the coastal atmosphere of LA’s surf and car culture.
The second series is a debut of exciting new explorations. While clearly deriving from the Azimuth paintings, these new works take us through the looking glass, where perspective has splintered and space appears as though seen through a kaleidoscope. Though there is a sense of psychedelic disorientation, these compositions also remind us of the prismatic nature of light - how the lens through which we look determines so completely how and what we see.
The last series is also a debut, and brings prismatic references into direct, physical form. In these sculptural wall pieces, light is refracted and distilled through sculptural volumes that are exquisitely moody, sensual and subtle.
As different as they may at first appear, all of Brindle’s works in the exhibition are the result of the same perceptual journey. They are the treasures discovered along the way. And as with such treasures, they contain mysteries that may not as yet be readily apparent, awaiting further study and analysis, to better elucidate the full extent of their meaning and import.
Casper Brindle grew up surfing the beaches along LA's coast during the 1970's and 80's, and worked briefly for Light and Space artist Eric Orr in the late 1980’s. The movement, and the landscape from which it arose, have clearly inspired his development and direction as an artist. With this new series, it is exciting to see how far Brindle has made this pursuit his own and how much fresh terrain remains to be explored.