Karsten Schubert London
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • News
  • Room 2
  • Ridinghouse
  • Viewing Room
  • Contact
  • Shop
Cart
0 items £
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu
  • Past

Bob Law: Field Works 1959–1999

Past exhibition
9 October - 7 November 2015
  • Overview
  • Works
  • Publications
Overview
Bob Law, Field Works 1959–1999

Thomas Dane Gallery – in association with Richard Saltoun and Karsten Schubert – is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Bob Law (1934-2004), spanning four decades.

During Bob Law's stay in St Ives in the late 1950s, the British artist worked intently on a series of Field drawings, which reduced elements observed in the surrounding landscape - the sun, trees and clouds - into a set of abstract signs. In each work, the carefully positioned icons are contained within a single rhomboid frame and dated, illustrating Law's exploration of line to convey space and mark time.

 

The Field drawings were, for Law, 'about the position of myself on the face of the earth and the environmental conditions around me […] I was finding myself, and the map that went with myself. I was transcribing it graphically into charts'.

Using these first mature works as a starting point, this exhibition focuses on how Law refined his abstract language in subsequent drawings and paintings throughout his career. Characterised by a near-blank pictorial field delimited by a thickly drawn line, Law simultaneously produced two groups of works during the 1960s that explored the play between darkness and lightness: the densely coloured 'closed' drawings and the sparse 'open' drawings.

Developing ideas first executed in drawing, Law's paintings share similar concerns. In Metaphysical Fantasy No.10 (1960), for example, Law reworks the line in paint and fills the frame with thick black paint. Whilst in Mister Paranoia IV 20.11.70 (No. 95) (1970), the irregular rhomboid frame seen in the early Field drawings is rendered on a monumental scale. As Douglas Fogle writes in the exhibition catalogue, the expansive dimensions of this work suggests 'not so much a painting as a portal that could physically engulf the viewer, offering a passage to another space, time or dimension.'

Presenting a concise overview of the artist's career, the show closes with a selection of large Castle paintings (1976-80) as well as two bodies of later drawings from 1995 and 1999, in which Law alters the proportion of the line to test ideas of the void and negative space.

A fully illustrated catalogue, published by Ridinghouse, accompanies the exhibition. It also includes new scholarship by Douglas Fogle, an independent curator and writer, on the relationship between Law's work and his American contemporaries.

 

Further information can be found at Thomas Dane Gallery.

 

Thomas Dane Gallery

3 Duke Street, St James's

London SW1Y 6BN [map]

Share
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Works
  • Bob Law Drawing 29.4.59, 1959 Pencil on handmade paper 25.3 x 35.5 cm | 10 x 14 in
    Bob Law
    Drawing 29.4.59, 1959
    Pencil on handmade paper 
    25.3 x 35.5 cm | 10 x 14 in
  • Bob Law Metaphysical Fantasy No. 10, 1960 Oil on canvas 192.2 x 166.5 cm | 75 5/8 x 65 1/2 in
    Bob Law
    Metaphysical Fantasy No. 10, 1960
    Oil on canvas
    192.2 x 166.5 cm | 75 5/8 x 65 1/2 in
  • Bob Law Mister Paranoia IV 20.11.70 (No. 95), 1970 Oil on canvas 240 x 418 cm | 94 1/2 x 164 5/8 in
    Bob Law
    Mister Paranoia IV 20.11.70 (No. 95), 1970
    Oil on canvas
    240 x 418 cm | 94 1/2 x 164 5/8 in
  • Bob Law 17.7.95, 1995 Pencil on paper 28.3 x 38.3 cm | 11 1/8 x 15 1/8 in
    Bob Law
    17.7.95, 1995
    Pencil on paper 
    28.3 x 38.3 cm | 11 1/8 x 15 1/8 in
Publications
  • Bob Law

    Bob Law

    Field Works 1959–1999 Text by Douglas Fogle Softback 48 pp, 29 colour ill. pages
    Publisher: Ridinghouse 2015
    ISBN: 978 1 909932 18 0
    Dimensions: 23 x 19.5 cm | 9 1/8 x 7 5/8 in
    Read more
Back to Past exhibitions

Karsten Schubert London

46 Lexington Street

London W1F 0LP, UK

tel: +44 (0)20 7734 9002

info@karstenschubert.com

Room 2 (Exhibition Space)

44 Lexington Street 

London W1F 0LW, UK  

Opening hours:
Tuesday–Friday, 11am–6pm; Saturday, 11am–5pm

 

Ridinghouse

46 Lexington Street

London W1F 0LP, UK

tel: +44 (0)20 7734 9008

info@ridinghouse.co.uk

Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Artnet, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list
View on Google Maps
Ocula, opens in a new tab.
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2022 Karsten Schubert London
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences