At Winchester Galleries on Broad Street

Opening: Wednesday, January 3, 2007 4:30 - 7:00 pm

Exhibition continues until January 27, 2007

The focus of the exhibition is three fine paintings from Yves Gaucher's Grey on Grey series. The paintings in the series disperse thin lines, short or long, in white or grey tonalities, across a subtly colour-tinted pale grey ground, reminiscent of how Webern had tossed sounds into audible space in a composition that had profoundly impressed Gaucher when he heard it in Paris during a visit in 1963

Sometimes, as in Alap R1, the composition is calmly symmetrical, then, in other paintings, it is quicker rhythms and asymmetrical energies that keep the eye moving, the painting unceasingly changing under our gaze. Gaucher's Grey on Grey paintings belong solidly to hardedge painting of the 1960s, and share with Bridget Riley a fascination with time and kinetic opticality. But Gaucher is perhaps the most spiritual artist of his generation wanting to paint the purest, most dematerialized abstract paintings anyone could paint, and wanting to induce in the viewer, as he said, with an eye to Rothko, a "state of trance." The Grey on Greys are one of the grand achievements of post-World War II abstract painting.

Roald Nasgaard