Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings at David Zwirner

Bridget Riley CH CBE is currently exhibiting a lifetime’s work at David Zwirner Gallery. Riley was born in London, 1931 and studied at the Royal College of Art in 1955. Soon after, Riley began a journey in “perceptive presence” in art to find aestheticism through painting, and has become highly influential in scientific and artistic spheres worldwide.

Truly innovative, Riley uses colour and form on canvas to convey the ideas of consciousness, logic and rationality. Through questioning the modern artist and their role, Riley challenges the perception of colour and expresses its ambiguity to the eye. In the artist’s work, we find very precise-sized canvasses that relate to the drawings in proportion and ratio. The engaging elements come in a series of horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines of various thicknesses juxtaposed with different values and hues, effecting the illusion of depth.

The paintings become spatial and create optical tension through their irregular and regular patterns. The relationship with the audience exists depending on how one positions oneself in the space surrounding the canvas. The works resonate via projection onto the audience, thus generating a physical connection. The artist associates the combination of evanescent instability and inescapable presence that characterises her colour with the nature of perfume, using aural and olfactory metaphors to play to the senses. Furthermore, the feeling of sound is present through image distortion.

The basis of colour is instability, expounded here to create rhythmic movement. To explain this phenomenon we have to look at the science of light, colour and sublimation, creating a loophole where science and art collide.

This exhibition is a must-see: the work speaks of a rarely explored side of art at a magnificent level.

Rafael Cunha

Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings is at David Zwirner Gallery until 25^th July 2014. For further information visit the gallery’s website here.