Karsten Schubert is pleased to show a group of paintings by Michael Craig-Martin, Gary Hume and Christopher Wool. The work of the three artists emerges from a conceptual rather than a painterly tradition. Nevertheless, the paintings in this exhibition offer the most astute and up-to-date comment on the questions and problems of image-making in a post-structuralist climate.
The problem of introducing images in the paintings is solved by using generic rather than actual images in the work of these three artists.
Gary Hume's Doors are not doors, or even images of doors, but rather abstract references to an image.
Michael Craig Martin's new works – which are partially painted directly onto the gallery wall – question the notion of painting and our reading of it on two levels. On the one hand, when the painted background is identical in colour to the canvas and, on the other, when the image used is more the sign of an image.
Christopher Wool, in his recent paintings, has forfeited images altogether for the use of words; the boldness of the typography is in strack contrast to the words used. The words are stripped of meaning, thereby highlighting the relativeness of both language and object.