Alexis Harding’s paintings simultaneously disrupt two very different conventions of modern art theory: that modernist painting emphasizes a flatness of the picture plane (Clement Greenberg); and that the grid, the “emblem of modernity,” crowds out “the dimensions of the real” (Rosalind Krauss). Harding’s works also overturn notions that a painting represents a moment of completion, or time fixed at a point on canvas. Instead, in the same way as glass is a suspension rather than a solid, constantly in infinitesimal motion, the paintings here show the grid hanging, drooping in paint, and even dripping, in some cases, onto the floor. Created by the chemical reaction between linseed oil–thinned oil paint and household gloss, Harding’s paintings imply and embody the idea of change.
While his grids are not flat, neither do they represent flatness: They are textured and kinetic, and they demonstrate that the rigors of the grid can be rendered unstable. The grid is there too, in an impressive wall piece, Bi-Product Depositories, 2003–2009. For it, sixty-three paintings have been made on the covers of the artist’s own exhibition catalogues. The by-products of studio practice and exhibition documentation, these images range from explorations into the qualities of paint, and juxtapositions of color, to more representational endeavors, such as faces and skyscrapers. Finally, Absorbency Retreat (Studio Bin), 1995–2010, is a paint-spattered garbage can, tightly packed with rolls of painted tape—a gesture toward that other by-product of the practice of painting: failure.
