Shades of Grey @ Skarstedt, London

Gerhard Richter, Untitled, 1970
CR255-1

On a hot London afternoon, it was a pleasure to wander into the deliciously air-conditioned Skarstedt gallery in St James's. For its current exhibition, Shades of Grey, the walls are filled with some equally cool grey works. Once inside and cooled down, I noticed that the selection of paintings, prints, sculptures spanning from black to white in this group show were anything but void of colour, achromatic or cold. There was a lot of life, light and emotion in the diverse selection of works, ostensibly brought together by their "common tonality."

Gerhard Richter, Tourist with Lion, 1975,
CR370

Some of the works in the exhibition were sumptuous, particularly those showing the versatility and surprising complexity of grey. Gerhard Richter's rarely exhibited abstract Untitled from 1970 stood out as one of the strongest works in the exhibition. It is an unusual work in which we see Richter using blooms of grey to explore depth and dimension on a flat canvas. In the smooth flat surface, we see ephemeral paint and our desire to see what is not there: we begin to see airy brushstrokes as wind swept dust, clouds, waves, anything but wisps of grey. The flatness of the canvas shows Richter's interest at this time in his career for the fungibility of painting and photography. Perhaps most intriguing is the work's resonance with paintings such as Tourist with Lion (1975) prompting questions about whether Untitled is an overpainting in which a figure has been erased by grey. Or are the deceptively whimsical movements in grey simply traces of Richter moving around the canvas?

Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, 2012

In another striking work Rudolf Stingel's Untitled, 2012 shows layers of co-existent greys. The pattern of an ancient oriental carpet executed in enamel overlays a variety of greys. The painting from Stingel's Carpet series engages his career-long fascination with the relationship between floor and wall. However, what is most captivating about Stingel's piece is the shifting appearance of the grey paint as it is seen from different angles. Under certain light, from a given angle, the white ornamentation glistens, and from other angles, the billowing dark grey in the centre seems to shift and consume the whole painting. Stingel's painting puts into practice the essence of grey as a constantly transforming — as opposed to dead and negative — colour.

Christopher Wool, Gate (P14), 1986

Christopher Wool does something related, but different when he puts the ornamentation in the foreground rather than creating a dialogue between layers. In Gate (P14). 1986, Wool uses a hard, enamel-like paint on aluminium to create what looks like an industrially made image. The repetition of the motif is perfect, seemingly machine-made. In fact, the motif is applied with a pattern roller. Th result is something similar to a Warhol silkscreen in which inconsistency emerges thanks to the paint wearing off the roller. Up close, we see the very slight differences in the motifs, indicating that each repetition will bring something unanticipated, something hand made to an otherwise predictable pattern. In other places on the aluminium surface, the pattern looks to be touched up by hand, suggesting than the industrially made, commercially produced image is never as uniform as it seems, or as we want it to be. Likewise, the art work is only as original as the hand that fills in the holes and corrects the flaws. 

Albert Oehlen, Titankatze mit Versuchstier, 1999

Like Stingel, Albert Oehlen captures the magic and multivalence of grey. However, for Oehlen, the possibilities of grey are laid bare through applications of paint and a vast palette of different kinds of grey. It's difficult to know what we are looking at when standing in front of Titankatze mit Versuchstier (Titanium Cat with Laboratory Tested Animal), 1999. Up close, swathes of different greys make an abstract painting, and from a distance, the two crazy creatures might be hugging or the one strangling the other.  This is typical Oehlen practicing his trademark confusion in the relationship between figures as well as the conscious thrust of the image. Again, over time spent with the work, we see the dexterity and multiple possibilities of grey, this colour that is supposed to be a non-colour. 

Richard Prince, What's His Face, 1989

Ultimately, I have mixed reactions to Shades of Grey. Of course, it's always exciting to see an exhibition devoted solely to grey. But like other such exhibitions, Shades of Grey lacks an underlying narrative. The group show includes abstract paintings such as those discussed, and then stretches to pieces such as Fischli & Weiss's Small Cupboard, 1987, a handmade furniture piece in black rubber. Like Small Cupboard, a 2020 KAWS sculpture, Gone had very little to do with the colour grey. Richard Prince's scrawls in graphite and ink on white canvas making humorous jokes seemed inconsistent with the exhibition's overall search for the "quiet beauty" of grey.  Lastly, of all Warhol's silkscreens in grey, The Last Supper, 1986 was an odd choice to include in an exhibition devoted to grey, particularly given his abundance of grey works. Overall, thus, it was great to see some of the works in exhibition, but there was not much coherence, particularly, not a "common tonality."