Keith Coventry

Deontological Pictures
Text by Nick Zangwill and an interview with the artist by Michael Bracewell
Hardback

Publisher: Ridinghouse 2012 and PEER, London.

ISBN: 978 1 905464 70 8

Dimensions: 27.5 × 21 cm | 10 7/8 x 8 1/4 in

Pages: 56 pp, 18 colour ill
£17.95 | $29.95

Keith Coventry is known for his works which co-opt philosophical or art-theoretical positions as a way of testing and questioning the boundaries of such ideas.

 

His newest body of work, The Deontological Pictures, is an extension of this approach. These variations of black paintings – some much darker and others with undulations of lighter greys and browns – are produced by following a set of rules and adding black pigment to rainwater collected in Coventry’s studio from a leaky roof.

 

The resulting mixture is then brushed onto the jute with a broom, left to dry flat on the floor, whereupon the material is stretched and framed. They have, the artist claims, ‘made themselves’.