ECHOES 

A couple of weeks ago, we were working with Jeff on some new prints. As ever, the connection between the prints and the sculptures began. I was taken back to the show at Pangolin and the sudden realisation at that time that I was looking at something new, certainly new for me.

I saw several phenomena all at once. These were sculptures in which I could see the inside and the outside at the same time. I had a linear plan of the construction by looking sown at the top and I could see an edited version of the sculpture by looking through the 'windows' cut into the curved planes. It was like an MRI scan of an idea.

I also became aware of the nature of the construction. It was several thoughts bolted together into an idea. The bolts and spacers holding it together were like the punctuation in a text. Each one was definitely there but, in some senses, invisible in the same way that a comma, full stop or parentheses are not pronounced. Punctuation is an essential convention that we all take for granted. Why should nuts, bolts and spacers not be thought of in the same way?

Many years ago, I asked Tony Caro why the welds in his '60s sculptures were not ground down. He said that the welds are what holds it together, they are fulfilling a function. In the same way as Jeff's bolts, they are there but not there.

Again, looking at the prints, the brand new, surprising prints, each one unique and each contextualised by the others which have been made with the same resources. My mind turns to the issue of chance. How much is the result of chance and how much is the result of a string of earlier choices or pre-determining factors?

There is certainly the element of the unexpected, but that isn't the throw-of-the-dice chance that I mean. Jeff plans these things in layers of intention, not aiming to pre-determine the outcome buy to draw together a group of potentials.

Chance is the totally unexpected, the random or the un-foreseeable. Very little of this happens but when it does, it is grabbed with both hands because there may be something of real significance in there.

When we made flat grounds, (underprintings), we decided to break them up, to introduce divisions in them to see how these might react with all the other elements. When they were broken horizontally, it immediately created a landscape. When broken vertically or diagonally, they created a kind of proscenium arch. In its own way, the random became the predictable.

The real chance - the really unexpected  - happened in the windows or in the obliteration of a central area. Things moved forward, sat back and began to talk to each other,

These were things I had seen suggested in the sculpture and which were spectacularly evident when the sculptures were in the landscape. 

Back to looking at the prints and the issue of context, intepretation and meaning suddenly evaporate. They are how they are, freestanding and feeding the eye, challenging the mind. 

They declare themselves as finished or not through some magical and indescribable transformation. Its a definite moment that has something to do with whether or not they 'work'.

Seen in a different context, framed and exhibited, they are simply beautiful. They way they were made and the discussions about the nature of the language disappear too; simply beautiful.

   - Kip Gresham