Issy Wood, What if you showed up (detail) (2021), via Carlos Ishikawa
Marking the latest entry in a body of work that has long evaded easy classification, painter Issy Wood has opened a show of new works this month at Carlos/Ishikawa, continuing her exploration of the painted canvas as a site for the juxtaposition of realities, memories and figments of the imagination.
Issy Wood, Study for jelly (2021), via Carlos Ishikawa
The show, which opened this past week at the gallery’s London exhibition space, makes for a fitting elaboration of the artist’s work, moving across a range of canvases, as well as painted furniture sitting in the middle of the gallery. Wood’s particular approach to painting, using thick layers of oil paint to create images that negotiate a line between the surreal and the tradition of the still life. Unifying this particular body of work is a fascination with proximity, posing images in close focus or cropped views of larger spaces. In one corner, repeated stalks of asparagus are posed against a red leather overcoat, the canvas split down the middle to present both, while a close by work splits the canvas into triplicate, posing fabrics, silent figures and a car interior. Space and material are posed together, forcing the viewer to balance questions of depth and proximity, closeness and intimacy with a sense of loneliness and abstraction. This split awareness reaches a high point in What if you showed up, a work that sees the artist spreading a series of compositions over the surface of upholstered chairs, turning this same sense of juxtaposition into a three-dimensional totem.
Issy Wood, Trilemma (Installation View), via Carlos Ishikawa
Issy Wood, Trilemma (Installation View), via Carlos Ishikawa
In other works, Wood takes on a more express study of single spaces and objects, like Nero oh, which depicts a bust of the Roman leader as a more subtle negotiation between portraiture and its abstractions. Rendering the bust in a deep, dark color palette, the work gives a sense of foreboding and ominousness, holding back easy readings of the image as if it were bathed in both literal and figurative shadow. Another, Study for jelly, makes unclear connections between a clearly synthesized surface depicting a series of bugs, and the object’s origin. Throughout, Wood mines this tension of subject and origin, leaving the viewer little space to grasp at connections, and turning the works into an otherworldly experience of looking.
The show closes November 20th.
Issy Wood, Nero oh (2021), via Carlos Ishikawa
– J. Shrine
Read more:
Issy Wood: Trilemma at Carlos/Ishikawa [Exhibition Site]
