Press

4 stars

April is the Crullest Month brings together work by Glasgow-based sculptor Fiona Jardine with London based painter Will Daniels. Both artists deal with artifice, with religious and high art references reinterpreted in paper, cardboard and something subtler than irony: artistry.

Amongst the bombastic eye-catchers that will decorate Glasgow’s galleries during Glasgow International 2006, this exhibition will act as a quietly confident show amongst shows. Keeping colour to a minimum always denotes a certain formal seriousness – ask the cubists and their purists followers – but these simple yet monumental works retain a sense of levity that offsets their weighty references.

Daniel’s small paintings are bleached-out copies of copies. These tonally perfect works are based on torn paper mock-ups of art historically significant canvases, representations of collaged masterpieces that manage to avoid the dead-end of mere appropriation by dispersing the taint of glibness. The creative process and gesture is petrified in works such as Mont Saint Victoire 1-4, in a technique that, one could say, refers to Jasper Johns’ early ghostly flags and his later use of Cezanne.

The funeral portals by Jardine are held together with black sticky ribbons of duct tape, yet manage to combine the space, bringing art, death, ritual and religious architecture together. Was it ever not? These black doors will not open, and therefore symbolically open onto infinity. Jardine’s influences are contradictorily arcane and contemporary, flimsy yet unshakable. This is solid work. The month may be cruel but the art is good.