Alan Ibell, Vessels

Alan Ibell’s works subtly cite frescos by painters of the early Renaissance period. The soft and delicately rendered texture of his paintings feel as if they are mixed deep into plaster. 

His use of dislocation and non-linear perspective, the purposefully off kilter angles, suggest a fragmented narrative, a question of consciousness. Something isn’t quite right. What is real and what is imagined? What is reality anyway?

Visually Ibell leaves us a great deal of time with our own thoughts; his sparsely populated canvases convey psychologically charged environments. Difficult to get right, they contain just a smattering of narrative across a subdued pastel ground: a lone figure, a floating jug, a desolate landscape. The more space he leaves, the more our own memories add in.

Vessels is the subject matter and title for this new exhibition. The canvas itself being a vessel inextricably tied to a complex play between mimicry and material. Dichotomies of full/empty, fire/water, abundant/sparse and traditional motifs are reworked to rethink, reflect, and subvert.