The Bruce High Quality Foundation: Pearls

10 Feb-11 Mar 2017

Overview

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new work by New York-based artist collective The Bruce High Quality Foundation. Baroque, from the Portuguese barroco, meaning "a rough or imperfect pearl," characterises a stylistic turn, quite pronounced at the turn of the 17th century, away from the order of the Renaissance and toward theatrical narrative. Caravaggio's chiaroscuro, Rubens' saturated colour and sweeping lines, and Poussin's narrativised landscape space all interfere with static geometric hierarchies to lead a viewer through the emotional experience of a story. 

With their new exhibition, Pearls, The Bruce High Quality Foundation appropriates images of several exemplary works of the Baroque style by these three masters. Areas of colour have been designated by an algorithmically determined stepped contrast scale, and move from dark to light through pigment saturation and the hue spectrum at a fixed rate. Meanwhile, automatic writing, drawing and scrawling – as though the paintings were used as chalkboards by various interlocutors in the Bruce's free university – interfere with the order of the universe, drawing a parallel between the mythological and religious drama of the Baroque masterpieces and the psychodrama of collaborative learning.