Oliver Marsden

In Praise of Light

May 20 (Fri) - June 30 (Thu), 2022

Oliver Marsden
Blue Liquemorph II, 2009
194 x 194 cm

Gallery 38 is pleased to announce “ In Praise of Light “, British artist Oliver Marsden's first solo exhibition in Japan in 12 years. The exhibition will feature a selection of works created during and after the artist's residency in Koumi-machi, Japan, where he stayed for several years from 2009.

Oliver Marsden has been making art for over thirty years. While his work has evolved over time, influenced by his day-to-day encounters and travels as well as time spent working in the studio of Damien Hirst, his practice remains largely focused on transcendental experiences with natural elements – light, water, air – or music. ‘I went to art college at the start of the nineties and spent the best part of that decade in a field, or nightclub dancing around speakers. I think that’s still what it comes back to: the love of light and music, the journey that they can take you on,’ he says. He works with a diverse range of materials from car paint to acrylics, oils and spray paint, employing original techniques to create vivid, luminous forms that simultaneously captivate and elude the gaze.

However, while the works themselves possess an almost ethereal quality, Mardsen’s approach to making art is largely methodical. He begins by preparing himself psychologically to create by practicing different forms of meditation and breathing techniques that offer a sense of calm and clarity. This act of centering is further intensified by the respirator, which Marsden wears to protect himself from the paint fumes. ‘Wearing the respirator has made me become very aware of my breath,’ he says. ‘If you breathe out too hard and you can expel condensation onto your painting, so it is best to keep a very steady natural breath. Without realising it, respirators have led me to practice Anapana meditation and helped to reach a state of mind that allows me to focus. I now use respirators less but continue with the breathing practice.’

Marsden also tends to work in thematic series, embracing repetition as another form of mindfulness that offers a sense of creative renewal and circularity. As such, each piece he creates forms part of an ongoing visual diary that records both a very specific point in time and the evolution of his artistic practice. For example, looking back at his first solo exhibition in Japan, ‘In Praise of Light’ at the Koumi Machi Kougen Museum in 2009, for which he made thirty-three works during a six month residency, Marsden comments: ‘Looking back, our time in Koumi was so special. The residency provided the space and opportunity to intensely focus. We also travelled and experienced much of Japanese culture. My standout memory is when we visited an exhibition of National Treasures from the Tenpyo period at the Nara National Museum. I was struck by a sculpture of priest Ganjinwajo. The lines of his robes had such fluidity and balance, they gave life to the sculpture. I stood mesmerised as I began to see the creases in the monk’s robe flow like music. And in that moment, I felt an absolute connection. A feeling in my chest of belonging, a connection to humanity past and present and at one with the universe.’

While making for Marsden requires routine, the impetus to create often comes from a fleeting encounter or what the artist describes as a ‘feeling of synchronicity’ whereby his observations and thoughts appear to align, creating a powerful feeling of harmony or wholeness.

For instance, the initial concept for the Harmonic paintings, several of which feature in this exhibition, was born from Marsden absentmindedly throwing pebbles into a bucket of water in his studio. He took photographs of the ripples across the surface and found himself connecting the images with the idea of sound waves vibrating through space. ‘I started imagining these giant liquid speakers that emit colour,’ he remembers. The earliest pieces in this series were created by Marsden spinning his arms around while spraying airbrush paint onto the canvas, resulting in translucent halos of colour. Over time this technique has evolved into Marsden building motorised ‘spin machines’, one of which comprises a broken chair mounted to the wall, allowing him to spin the surface while brushing and spraying the paint, offering a greater level of precision and fluidity as well as depth. The most recent iterations of the series depict an intense orb of colour that appears almost black at its centre, becoming lighter as it expands outwards and eventually fades back into white. The progression of colour and form resonates with the natural inhale and exhale of breath, connecting the viewer’s gaze back to not just their own body, but also the presence of the artist.

Meanwhile, Liquemorph, one of the artist’s oldest series that he first started in 1996 while he was living and studying in the US, evolved from the artist’s attempts at figuration. While this rather more traditional foundation might not be immediately visible, Marsden describes the spherical shapes that appear floating in misty hues of colour as being ‘geometric human elements.’ ‘When I started the series, I was interested in the relationship between man and nature, but also in the body as something more abstract moving through space like when you’re on the dance floor of a club, surrounded by dry ice and lights and there’s this deep feeling of interconnection, of the edges of things becoming blurred,’ he explains. More recently, Marsden has started thinking about the series in relation to ideas around Buddhist meditation as well as the concept of afterimages that form optical illusions in the eye and alter our perception of the image. Indeed, as we gaze at the surface, the spherical shapes appear to almost shiver or pulsate, simultaneously emerging from and retreating into the background. In this way, the image itself becomes endlessly renewing, offering a fresh perspective each time we return to contemplate the canvas.