MILAN.- The A arte Invernizzi gallery opened a solo exhibition of the English artist Alan Charlton who has specifically ideated an exhibition plan based on the relative gallery spaces.

In his own words - “I am an artist who makes a grey painting” - Alan Charlton has since 1969 investigated the different potentialities of grey monochromes, placing them in relation to the surrounding environment together with heterogeneous modulations of light.

For this occasion the artist is exhibiting works which continue a course begun with the “Pyramid Grid Paintings” and the “Triangle Grid Paintings” presented in the gallery in his one-man exhibition of 2011: in those works the canvases in a rectangular format were arranged according to orthogonal directrices in order to define pyramidal forms that here become triangular archetypes, no longer suggested but defined and complete in their own right.

Small triangle canvases are exhibited on the upper floor of the gallery, each having a different colour of grey. The desire for investigation and knowledge, pursued with artistic and rational coherence, draws greater force from the dialogue with the large works exhibited on the gallery’s lower floor: triangular monochromes characterised by a preponderant physicalness.

‘I want my paintings to be: abstract, direct, urban, basic, modest, pure, simple, silent, honest, absolute.’ – Alan Charlton

Alan Charlton paints monochrome grey paintings – which he has been doing since the early 1970s. Far from being monotone and unexciting Charlton’s works concentrate on physicality, uniformity and method and they evoke a profound sense of the painting as a spatial entity.

Charlton originally chose grey because of its ordinary quality but he rapidly recognised that the colour held special characteristics. Consequently the paintings are far more expressive than anticipated. Immaculate surfaces are interrupted by form and rhythm is generated by broken repetition. Charlton has been an inspiration for many contemporary artists and this show is testimony to his continually honest and enduring vision and integrity.