Return to the Monochrome....with Reason

The back room at The Ingleby Gallery, currently contains two works of art. Supremacist, Nikolai Suetin’s white, monochromatic collage subtlety and ably occupies one wall while David Batchelor’s slide show Found Monochromes of London Volume 1 (1997 – 2003) blinks onto another. Batchelor’s projection consists of numerous photographed landscapes. All the images are linked by the presence of a single white rectangle. These voids are infact empty billboards whose earlier advertisements have been taken away. This exhibition boldly contradicts his luminous colour field forest-fest on show this August at The Talbot Rice.

Suetin’s painterly textures and linear patterns correlate to Batchelor’s torn off posters. The projector clucks round and the white rectangles he has found resemble ready-made canvasses. These neutral shapes offer space to their backdrop of Graffiti. The repeating images combine: the viewer catches snippets of street life: plants bedded in concrete, a brick wall that simply reads ‘Chop’.

As the projection continues traces of the artist emerge. A shadow, a disembodied hand until finally Batchelor’s full body appears reflected in a door, triumphantly sporting a void for a head. This cheeky Dada reference and a giggle pulled me out of my hypnotic gaze. The room suddenly feels alive with Monochromes: the projector’s industrial plinth, the white rectangular boxes punctuating the skirting boards and not least, my reflection in the window panes. Suetin’s collage White Square, Suprematist Volume, is a simple 1920’s monochrome. However, resting alongside Batchelor’s work it transforms into a beacon of Dada and Modernism.

This insightful exhibition delights in the details of urbanism as well as opening pertinent discussions in the year Sao Paulo banned advertising in public spaces.