
Sean Crossley
Échangeur, 2021
Oil on canvas
210 x 170 cm
82 1/2 x 67 in
82 1/2 x 67 in
Copyright the artist & Harlan Levey Projects
Across from the turnstiles in the 'Bourse' metro stop, there is a set of escalators, which in Crossley's painting are turned into a kind of cognitive or neurological system. An...
Across from the turnstiles in the "Bourse" metro stop, there is a set of escalators, which in Crossley's painting are turned into a kind of cognitive or neurological system. An analogy perhaps drawn from the head-down cliché experience of the body, but also the persistent recurrence of staircases throughout modernism as a symbolic threshold, or a motif of ascension or comprehension. Via this prism, an automatic staircase that was broken down or out of order seems a quite fitting subject for a postmodern/ contemporary painting today. Crossley's improvised, almost calligraphic painting process renders the subject useless, while developing a more abstract gesturing of information that pushes and pulls the levels and grounds of this space.
Crossley: "It is important to mention that I worked on "Cirulateur" and "Echangeur" at the same time. At a certain point where the composition was blocked in "Echangeur", I recognized the importance of a specific detail (a strange metallic cylinder placed between the turnstiles), which reflected the two spaces. I began to paint a distorted reflection of one painting in the other, which in turn lead to a cycle of editing each painting after the other. In this way, these intrinsically orientated pictures manage to reach out across the room to each other in an explicitly extrinsic manner."
Crossley: "It is important to mention that I worked on "Cirulateur" and "Echangeur" at the same time. At a certain point where the composition was blocked in "Echangeur", I recognized the importance of a specific detail (a strange metallic cylinder placed between the turnstiles), which reflected the two spaces. I began to paint a distorted reflection of one painting in the other, which in turn lead to a cycle of editing each painting after the other. In this way, these intrinsically orientated pictures manage to reach out across the room to each other in an explicitly extrinsic manner."