Andrew Grassie Asteroid, 2020
Tempera on paper on board
14,8 x 18,8 cm (image)
31,1 x 35,2 x 3 cm (framed)
The work is from a new body of work exploring images from the artist’s image archive, among them decades old snapshots associated with personal memories, tied to a specific place, a moment in time. Andrew Grassie chose motifs that had held his attention for reasons he could not always explain: photos from his image archive, sometimes many decades old and exuding a vague awkwardness, became sources for these works.
Each image of this series can be traced to a specific moment, often specific visual phenomena, remembered by the artist for personal and/or artistic reasons.
In the words of Andrew Grassie:
“From my trip to the library looking for an image of a diagram, I also snapped some images of planets and asteroids. This one, ‘243 Ida’, had a particularly potato-like shape. I wanted to add some sci-fi leaning images to the series. It would have an effect on the Blank paintings, which could potentially be looked on as empty space. I have always been attracted to space and the space race. This asteroid shape makes it slightly comical at the way these huge objects hang there in space and have an air of pathos.”
The intimately scaled, precisely painted work is executed in tempera, a painting technique associated with pre-Renaissance panel paintings anteceding the development of oil paint.
Each image of this series can be traced to a specific moment, often specific visual phenomena, remembered by the artist for personal and/or artistic reasons.
In the words of Andrew Grassie:
“From my trip to the library looking for an image of a diagram, I also snapped some images of planets and asteroids. This one, ‘243 Ida’, had a particularly potato-like shape. I wanted to add some sci-fi leaning images to the series. It would have an effect on the Blank paintings, which could potentially be looked on as empty space. I have always been attracted to space and the space race. This asteroid shape makes it slightly comical at the way these huge objects hang there in space and have an air of pathos.”
The intimately scaled, precisely painted work is executed in tempera, a painting technique associated with pre-Renaissance panel paintings anteceding the development of oil paint.
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