Gravity Painting (Campground Teal No.2) 2009 detail
Vinyl on PVC W 47” x H 49” x D 1/2”

Patrick Cull | review

The Fall of Doon Twine 

March 03 – March 27, 2010

Opening: Saturday, March 13, 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.


The works in this exhibition were produced in a studio that was once the heart of the former Doon Twines cordage manufacturing plant in Kitchener.

The Fall of Doon Twine is an exhibition of new work by Kitchener-based artist, Patrick Cull, marking his first solo exhibition at Peak Gallery.  His works fall between the catagories of  painting and scultpture, often playing with the tension between physical material and illusury depth.  The show is comprised of shaped epoxy paintings and a series of gravity paintings.  Both series of works are constructed from materials and processes that Cull has borrowed and refined from his experience in the commercial sign-making industry. 

In his suite of gravity paintings, the pieces originate as simple stripe compositions, constructed from pliable plastic and vinyl.  They are then milled into concentric shapes on a CNC router bed.  From there, the resultant series of shapes are hung on a wall from single or multiple points.  The stacking and bending action of gravity then becomes the final organizing force in the compositions.  Here, gravity is both a physical force that animates the work and a conceit for the lineage of modernist aesthetics that inform Cull’s use of abstraction.  Just as the pieces collectively groan under the weight of an aesthetic tradition, the bending and distending of precise geometry suggests forces outside the logic of technological progress and perfection.  

In his suite of shaped epoxy paintings, the artist references heraldry, road markings and industrial design in his use of the chevron.  Using computer software, the chevrons are multipied and reconfigured to produce patterns that inform the exterior of the support.  Often complex with angles, the outside shape of Cull’s works resemble bizarre hybrids of industrial machinery, weather systems, and biological mutations.  The paintings are incised and carved using sandblasting and routering techniques, and are filled more or less back to a level grade with multiple layers of tinted epoxy.   While they appear to follow the lineage of purely optical modernist painting, they in fact share a foothold in the realm of sculpture, confusing the boundaries between depicted and actual space.