Abstract Logic

As artist-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust [2004/5] I researched the history and evolution of modernist ideas of beauty and taste, through the writings of the Romantics. The Romantics’ view of landscape, as a visual experience, concerned with beauty, taste, and wonder, can be seen as an alternative interpretation of the same Kantian position which forms the bedrock of the modernist criticism of Greenberg and Fried. The works produced and presented in Grasmere alluded to this history. They evidence both a stylised representation of nature, and of man within nature, and a stylised re-presentation of modernist abstraction. The paintings presented a multiplicity of foci and spoke of preceding art history with an informed but fluid manner.

The accompanying publication for this solo exhibition included essays by Kathy Kubicki [contributor to Art Monthly & Frieze] and Matthew Collings [noted critic and TV broadcaster].

Biography

Daniel Sturgis is a London based artist, he received an MA from Goldsmiths College in 1994, where he subsequently taught, until being appointed Course Director in Painting at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. Recent exhibitions include 'Plastic Culture: Legacies of Pop 1987 - 2008', Harris Museum, Preston (2009); 'Invisible Cities, Jerwood Space, London (2009); and the solo presentations 'Possibilities in Geometric Abstraction', Galerie Hollenbach, Stuttgart (2008) and 'Everybody Loves Somebody', The Locker Plant, Chinati Foundation, Marfa Texas (2007). He has curated a number of exhibitions looking at aspects of contemporary painting and its historic legacy. These include, Daniel Buren's 'Voile Toile/Toile Voile', Wordsworth Trust Grasmere (2005); Between 'Letters and Abstraction', Wordsworth Trust (2004); co-curated with Richard Kirwan 'Jeremy Moon - A Retrospective' (2001), and co-curated with Martyn Simpson 'Perfidy' at Le Corbusier's convent Santa Marie de la Tourette in France.

In 2008 he was awarded a PhD by Oxford Brookes University, his thesis examined the position of abstract painting, and the use of the Baroque, in early post-modern thought.

• http://www.danielsturgis.co.uk