The subject matter of Andrew Sendor’s enigmatic paintings derives, as in the art of the past, from a textual source: in his case, a narrative written by the artist himself. Yet rather than literally depicting the events described, his paintings explore their implications and the ideas they generate, which are ones that could not be more current: the troubled authority of the visual image; contemporary anxieties about human agency in a world of synthetic cognition; and above all, the urgency of retaining the hand-made in an increasingly disembodied cultural environment. These are ideas that specifically relate to Sendor’s chosen visual language: that of the meticulously rendered illusion of virtual reality on a flat surface. These are works, then, that reflect on painting’s relationship with the truth, a concern that is both rooted in historical artistic practices and utterly of our moment.
This approach is equally true of the narrative from which these images spring. Sendor has created a story within a story, displacing his own authorship onto a fictional surrogate: a teenaged writer named River Wright. In Wright’s unfinished debut novel, a piece of speculative fiction set in the near future, four teenagers form a collective called The Off Liners, each one utilising their analogue skill sets to carve out a utopian community independent of the digitised present. Yet this separation is threatened as the possibility of complete withdrawal from technology becomes increasingly questioned. It is this narrative that supplies the impetus for the paintings on display in this exhibition. In River Found Solace, for instance, River Wright’s white-gloved hands are seen holding open the pages of a book, with a photograph of Pencilessa, a character in his novel, held still under its left thumb, while the other hand seems caught in the act of writing on a blank page. The painting’s allusion to the visual tropes of 17th century western European painting – we might think of the intense focus of candlelit scenes by Georges de la Tour or Hendrick ter Brugghen – helps unpack the central concerns of Sendor’s work. Just as painting’s relationship to shared reality was pressurised in European art of that period, so too is Sendor’s. After all, the technology-induced anxieties in Wright’s novel are part of the artist’s paintings too. Like The Off Liners themselves, Sendor produces defiantly analogue objects that nevertheless are haunted by contemporary digital troubles. Historical questions of art’s claims to truth are recuperated and made urgent in Sendor’s work.
The procedure by which these paintings were made is typical of Sendor’s approach to date, which is as much reminiscent of filmmaking as it is of painting. Each work is the result of a complex history, beginning with a written narrative, continuing into casting and staging, and then documentation in photography and film, which then feeds the artist’s labour-intensive studio practice. This rigorously mediated process nonetheless results in paintings that possess a startling naturalism and convincingness. In Atlassa’s lines of code, the hair of Atlassa, another character from Wright’s novel, cascades down the centre of the painting with a shimmer and precision that invite a tactile response. Yet thin lines at the painting’s vertical edges and diagonally across its bottom right corner disrupt the clarity of the image, providing a visual interference that opens up a space of doubt. As in Gerhard Richter’s Betty (1988), a portrait of his young daughter with her head turned away, the painting’s hidden information – you wish they’d turn, just once – becomes part of a larger inquiry into our faith in visual images and the truths they contain. It is in this sense that a work like this extrapolates the central themes of the narrative from which it derives and expands outwards into contemporary concerns.
The fragmented nature of Sendor’s scenes reflects his source material’s unfinished nature. What we are often witness to in these works is a sense of withheld conclusions, enigmas that resist interpretation. Things are half-seen, half-obscured. A disembodied hand reaches towards out of the shadows towards a lit candle in The Metallic Scent Of Blood; below, juxtaposed as in a collage, glistening waves break on a beach. In Salome And Apollo Look To The Sea, Breath The Salty Air And Become Absorbed By The Coastal Atmosphere, similar seascapes take up the painted space, the naturalism of their rendition made strange by Sendor’s division of the surface into zones of differing hues. What’s staged here is a tension between a painting’s claims to veracity and the presence of formal interruptions that cast them into doubt. As proxy for Sendor himself, River Wright comes to stand for the ambitions of a creative practitioner whose work stages acts of resistance to the increasing dislocation of the world in which he operates.
—words by Ben Street
Dr Ben Street is an art historian and author living in London. He is a contributing writer to Art Review, Gagosian Quarterly,
In addition to the exhibition text, we invite you to download the literary companion to Andrew Sendor’s ‘RIVER’ exhibition. This text provides an expanded understanding of the exhibition’s layered narratives and sub-narratives, articulated through The Off Liners, the unfinished novel authored by Sendor’s fictional protagonist, River Wright.
To download, please use the button below titled DOWNLOAD LITERARY COMPANION.
