Max Gimblett: Workspace

FROM THE BOOK

"Just by moving one's hand--by picking up a brush--a rose can be restored, and Savage's photographs reveal this mystery. Gimblett is so close to his work in these photographs--we get to see his frown of concentration, his hand creating its mark--but at the same time, our own experience of his art shows us how far he has removed himself, how much we are allowed to step in and see ourselves. And although the relationship between those secret masses in his paintings and the paint-spattered floors in New York is as mysterious and pragmatic as the knowledge of the blood beneath our skin, how our heart is patiently moving it around for us as we look out at these objects, second by second, I know that we tend to return changed from the experience of viewing these paintings. If I sit and look at one of Gimblett's paintings for half an hour, Ido feel restored. In workspace, John Savage's photographs give us the precise place where the world crosses Gimblett's willful path as an artist, a set of visual and spatial coordinates which hover as ghostly presences when these paintings cross our own path, when we look at them hung on museum and gallery and living room walls far, far away."

Jenni Quilter, excerpted from her text to Max Gimblett: Workspace.