PARIS.- Sobering Gallery announces The Unassuming Eye, a duo show by Paul Winstanley and Luke Skiffington.

In ‘L’œil et l’esprit’ by Maurice Merleau-Ponty the philosopher questions the painters vision, capable of watching without categorizing, in contradiction with the profane, who only considers objects. ‘The eye of the painter only cares about what is visible and cannot be synthetically conceptualized, or seen as a mere objectivity.’ Hence what is invisible to the eye of the profane becomes visible through the vision of the painter. The Unassuming Eye highlights the vision of two artists whose paintings, in differing ways, make something otherwise unknowable, visible.

Paul Winstanley, who paints from photographs, uses a process of accumulation of images and then, removing some parts of it or drawing the eye of the spectator to a detail he highlights, he redesigns them entirely. There is a tension between, on the one hand, the objective absence through emptiness and barren spaces and, on the other hand, the footprint that is left, each time a semi-public place is used. These everyday functional places become a sort of abstraction revealed by a subtle play of light, a technique of the colours and by a sensitive composition. Frequently used, these places symbolise a collective experience and show some cultural peculiarities, applied to a different geographical location and to a different temporality.

Luke Skiffington adopts various imageries (from divergent sources including design, photography and drawing) in an abstract iconography. The resulting images are similar to the superimposition of two states, a conscious representation with a playful approach to abstraction and the painting process. Emphasizing contradictions, repetitions and variations in both imagery and approach, his work generates its own organic rhythm. Engendering visual and interpretive possibilities, his work establishes readings beyond its original motivation, reflecting a wider experience of our surroundings. His adoption of ambiguous imagery allows for a range of perceptions by the viewer based on their own experiences and on the subjectivity of their gaze.

For this exhibition the two artists are showing paintings each from one series; Paul Winstanley's 'Art School' series and Luke Skiffington's 'Mr Bauhaus' series. Both titles suggest an engagement with the pedagogy of art but each approach this from very different starting points; Winstanley's realism is tempered by an underlying recognition of the centrality of abstraction as a structural and conceptual force; Skiffington's abstraction moves fluidly between real and identifiable situations. The dialogue between these two groups teases out the narrow gap between abstraction and realism as both a conceptual as well as visual condition. This dialogue, in its own way, exemplifies what painting can do.