The doors of perception

People tend to think of abstraction as abstract. But nothing is abstract: it's a self-portrait. A portrait of one's condition. (Sean Scully, Zurich, 2006) The book Change and Horizontals is the catalogue of the exhibition with the same name that took place at the Timothy Taylor Gallery of London, then at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art and at the Walter Storms Galerie of Munich, up to lead the 14th March 2013 at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna of Rome and the 26th September at The Drawing Center in New York. Change and Horizontals collects several works by the Irish artist, paintings and drawings, all dating from the mid-seventies plus some extracts from his unpublished sketches Notebook. At this early stage of his career Scully's works are dominated by geometric pattern of vertical and horizontal lines and a narrow range of cool colors: most are grey, sky-blue and green that echoes at Mark Rothko and Giorgio Monrandi.
To accompany the images there are several important critical texts, as Peter Benson Miller's Le convergenze Parallele and the critical text by Joanna Kleinberg and Brett Littman, respectively Assistant Curator and Director of The Drawing Center, NY, the Maria Giuseppina di Monte's essay entitled Sean Scully. Detto fra le righe and Audition, the marvellous Colm Toìbìn's short story.