FAD Magazine

FAD Magazine covers contemporary art – News, Exhibitions and Interviews reported on from London

Paul’s ART STUFF on a Train # 101: ‘I Fink it’s a Face’

gallery2

Graham Fink (at Riflemaker to 21 March) is a pareidolian: he sees faces all over the place. That’s picked up in witty photographs which land somewhere between gestalt and abstraction by discovering visages in peeling walls, clouds and rock formations etc. True, I’ve seen that done before, but the surprising variety and specificity which Fink discovers gives his images an extra dimension. He displays a selection of these on monumentalising slabs of marble. Fink finds it natural to draw faces, and has taken to doing so using only his eyes, into which an infrared light is shone in a development of marketing researchers’ well-established eye tracking technology, as used to find out what attracts the viewer of an advert. To date he’s ‘drawn’ those faces mainly from his imagination, but I caught him essaying a portrait using the technique, which makes more sense to me: the act of looking is translated directly into a representation made with no ‘middle man’ in the form of hands. Impressive as Fink’s abilities are given the method, the drawings look hesitant and scratchy, even when they, too, are given marble import. There’s something alluring about the directness achieved, though, which makes one wonder whether some sort of essence is being revealed. In his spare time, incidentally, Fink is Chief Creative Officer for China at the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather – and his most famous advert sees hundreds of people form… a face.

eye drawing 3

Most days art critic Paul Carey-Kent spends hours on the train, traveling between his home in Southampton and his day job in London. Could he, we asked, jot down whatever came into his head?

Categories

Tags

Related Posts

Paul’s Gallery of the Week: Pilar Corrias

Paul’s Gallery of the Week: Pilar Corrias

Whilst several galleries have recently moved into the traditional art spaces of Cork Street, Pilar Corrias’s new flagship space is on nearby Conduit Street, with 5,000 sq ft over two floors. 

Alexis Hunter: ‘The Model’s Revenge I-III’, 1974 - Set of three silver gelatin prints, 41 x 51 cm

Paul’s Gallery of the Week: Richard Saltoun

I first met Richard Saltoun some 16 years ago, when he was dealing from Savile Row together with Laurent Delaye (who now runs his gallery from Ramsgate) prior to setting up on his own account in 2012

Trending Articles

Join the FAD newsletter and get the latest news and articles straight to your inbox

* indicates required