Flabbergast

Sutherland’s artworks disrupts traditional notions of modernist abstraction. Unstable rectangles, hysterical grids and other forms form the building blocks of the painterly “Sutherland”, where “aimless geometry” and slanted horizons suggest a future landscape. The artist’s drawings and collagist compositions both symbolise a kind of “off-grid life”, a “utopian idyll”.

The works defy tradition through the use of broken blinds and torn or folded canvas, embracing the physical act of destruction and creation. The principle is to reuse and reinterpret traditional artistic motifs and materials. The elements create dynamic compositions that delight in their unconventionality.

If we delve deep enough into the layers of modernity – its many schools and manifestations of abstraction – we find ourselves in a place where the referential and relational qualities of images are obscured, while the raw and the elemental come to the fore.

The Flabbergast exhibition presents David S Sutherland’s paintings and assemblages, which explore an ever-changing and dystopian world. The works suggest that contemporary ‘reality’ is stranger than fiction.