Page 14 - Art First: Christopher Cook: a chance encounter on the way down

for the viewer, anxious to seek interpretable narrative clues about what kind of ground
this is. A small leaf form (one of the last aspects of the image you notice) is hatched like
the inorganic cylinder, and is the sole element to point away on the opposing diagonal.

The details matter, but don’t explain the whole. It is the intensity of looking that the
images bring about which appears to matter more than any specific interpretable signs.
Transit query is crossed by a diagonal scraped line from which two ovoid forms hang,

[ ] each made in the same way, to suggest that they have a dark interior. They must surely
be some kind of cable car. But the frank way in which this interpretable aspect is given to
you by the artist does not clarify the rest of the space. The dark horizontal lines suggest
steps extending up high, perhaps into some distant arch. But how are the two large

masses connected in space? What is connected to what? Lines that in the lower half
suggest vegetation, in the upper half suggest paths, tracks and mapping. Plan view
interferes with the perspective view. It is the spatial complexity of this hypothetical
stacked landscape that absorbs you. The pods of the cable car, running right across

it and out each side, throw in a sense of disconnection from ordinary modes of loco -
motion and spectatorship.

In some cases the mood becomes distinctly Piranesian. Ways forward contradicts the

implied optimism of its title by showing vertiginous walkways that attempt to scale
or make sense of an explosive, fracturing mass. A similar spatial drama is evoked by
the violet hour which, unusually, is almost devoid of any obvious constructed details,
or representations of human habitation and intervention. The bold marks and dabs can

be associated only with vegetation and with trees, perhaps beside water. Here nature,

ways forward, , graphite and oil on paper, 50 x 36 cm