Halsey McKay presents a suite of five new oil paintings by Scottish painter Steven Cox, available in the Viewing Room through March 26. A long time collaborator with the gallery, Cox’s latest series builds upon his performative explorations of abstraction. This project is accompanied by texts from Kadar Brock, Kevin Harman, Chris Hood, Annabel Keenan, Eva Robarts.

This Viewing Room is now closed. For information on currently available works by Steven Cox please email info@halseymckay.com.

STEVEN COX by ANNABEL KEENAN

Scottish artist Steven Cox creates stunning, textured, abstract paintings that capture the essence of the world around him. Colors seem to be born before the viewer’s eye, slowly emerging from the canvas, and melting into one another like oil swirling on pavement. Cox’s work is as much an exploration of abstraction as it is a celebration of the act of artmaking itself. His process is performative, involving methodical, carefully executed techniques and a wide range of tools at each step. The results are explosive.

It starts with a base. Cox sprays, pours, or sponges acrylic paint onto a canvas. This layer, visually stunning with luminescent colors ranging from turquoise to pink to orange in recent works, becomes the background of what will eventually be a field of rich, bumpy texture all topped with speckled and striated bands of thick oil paint. For his latest series, Cox used the pouring method to build the base. Eight to ten layers of highly diluted paint pool on the canvas as the artist pushes and pulls, smearing the colors to achieve his intended results. While the application of base paint varies, the process of achieving the top layer remains the same.

Steven Cox
TRNSFR Fireworks, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas
29.5 x 23.6 inches (75 x 60 cm)

Cox first adds acrylic gloss medium using a paint roller to achieve a consistent texture. Then, he begins a process that lends its name to the exhibition, TRNSFR. He spreads oil paint and medium onto a sheet of plastic. Cox then suspends the sheet parallel to his prepped canvas and uses his hands to transfer the oil paint from one surface to another. Every decision he makes at this point will be unalterable. The motions of his hands leave their marks on the surface of the painting. Often playing music in his studio, Cox’s transfer method is truly performative, a dance of gestures that is revealed only after the plastic is removed. Vertical stripes reveal subtle pauses and points of deeper pressure, traces of the artist’s hands forever documented.

Clean, crisp edges afford the viewer with a closer look at each individual layer and reveal Cox’s control of the materials at every step in the complex process. As involved as the creation of each painting is, Cox has mastered the performance with skill and deliberation over the seven years he has worked in this method. Viewing Cox’s work is a participatory experience. Like looking through a window screen, the eye oscillates between focusing on the mesh-like network of black oil paint and looking beyond this layer to the hues of the background. The subtle reflective quality of the glossy paint medium gives the surface a slightly sparkling finish, as if glistening in mist. This medium radiates the colors below as the light hits the surface. As the light of day changes and the viewer moves, so do the colors.

With his transfer method, Cox’s work undeniably resembles Richard Serra’s drawings, in particular the striations and speckles of Serra’s Rotterdam Vertical (2016-17) series, and the brindled, almost camouflage pattern of his Rambles (2015) and Composites (2016). Visual similarities also arise with Mark Bradford’s mixed media paintings, both in the shared emphasis on texture and in the overall patchy colors of the surface.

Detail: TRNSFR Fireworks, 2022

With Bradford, another key similarity comes into play. Both artists capture the essence of the world around them. While Bradford uses found materials, including layers of posters and advertisements plastered on street walls, Cox’s exploration of place is more conceptual. Through his process, Cox captures the feeling of being somewhere, an atmosphere, somehow even a sound. The colors he uses relate to surfaces he sees outdoors, like patinated buildings stained by pollution and cement discolored by oil, rain, and years of use. These colors change over time, fading as they dry and become embedded in the surface, or increasing in intensity as they are continually subjected to the elements.

In this sense, Cox enters into dialogue with yet another artist: Cy Twombly. While visually dissimilar, the two artists focus on the layers that exist on the surfaces of the world. Twombly captured the millennia of history built up on the walls, streets, and buildings of Italy, in particular of Rome. His abstract paintings bear evidence of graffitied walls blanketed in a thin layer of dust kicked up from the ground. Anyone who has visited Rome and walked through the ruins, which exist throughout the city, knows the dust of antiquity that inevitably covers your feet. So too does Cox capture these layers of history. Reminiscent of a pixelated image of an Edinburgh street corner, Cox’s paintings appear to have been slashed with a puddle by a car driving by, covered in glue and bits of a poster once removed, power washed, painted, and power washed again.

Detail: TRNSFR Fireworks, 2022

Abstract, conceptual, and performative, Cox’s practice is as dynamic as it is engaging. To interact with one of his paintings is to dive into a complex process, each careful step preserved in the layers of texture and color. Perhaps the viewer will hear the music of his studio or imagine the salty air coming from the Firth of Forth. Or perhaps they will see something different altogether, following a memory one of the layers has stirred. Moving from the oil paint details of the top down through the crags of the glossy acrylic medium to the ocean of colors saturating the surface, what is certain is that the viewer will emerge with a glimpse of Cox’s world.

Installation view: TRNSFR Fireworks, 2022

CURTAINS, CLOUDS, CLAWS by EVA ROBARTS

Only when I’m back in the mountains can I see the clouds

but the curtains

those never change

not replicas

transfers

different time and different place

painting the same picture

my hands try and grab those folds

but all I get is cloud

I bring these curtains everywhere I go

I let them cover me and become my skin

a living canvas

clawing

but I’m no saint

I want no part of that cave

so give me my music

and I’ll stay in the city

without a cloud in sight

Steven Cox
TRNSFR Through A Glass Darkly, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas
29.5 x 23.6 inches (75 x 60 cm)

Detail: TRNSFR Through A Glass Darkly, 2022

Installation view: TRNSFR Through A Glass Darkly, 2022

INTERVIEW with KADAR BROCK

Kadar Brock: I’m really interested in how you’re making these paintings. From looking at them, I imagine there being either some transfer process (also the titles push me in this direction or misdirection) where brush strokes are made on another surface and then pressed onto the canvas, or there’s a screen printing like application… I could also imagine a very slow, dry gesture with a direct brush application, with you very methodically drawing black paint across a mottled surface…though the texture of the black paint more-so reminds me of something pressed or rolled. Would you mind sharing that nitty gritty? Or do you prefer it to be more mysterious… In my own work I’m never sure on the balance to strike with this kind of reveal.

Steven Cox: You’re right, the process involved can be interpreted in a number of ways. The surfaces are certainly thought provoking, and I think this mystery highlights the allurement of process based abstraction. And yes, a transfer process is involved in the making of these works, whilst the overarching title TRNSFR aims to direct the viewer to think along these lines.

Simply put, this suite of TRNSFR paintings incorporates three distinct layers, and each layer plays upon a unique visual sensation. My logic is that the layers comply with a framework where -variations of- seriality can be explored. In general, creative frameworks have always been an incredibly important aspect of my studio practice, extending to how I orchestrate each series of paintings.

Steven Cox
TRNSFR This Is Paradise, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas
29.5 x 23.6 inches (75 x 60 cm)
KB: This I can really relate to, this idea of having a framework or box to work within… I find a lot of liberation by having some guidelines or guide rails as well.

SC: Most certainly, I find that a deeper and more inquisitive level of investigation can be achieved by actually having set parameters to work within. The TRNSFR paintings begin by building up layers of semi-transparent acrylic paint which is poured and pushed around the canvas surface causing puddles of colour to collect in areas. The colours naturally form a soft and hazy backdrop. Atop this is a layer of acrylic gel medium. This medium is applied and rolled using a domestic foam roller, which creates a fascinating mottled texture that simultaneously reflects sunlight when viewed from an angle. It’s rather magical, and dries crystal clear which allows for the base layers of colour to radiate through. Finally, atop this textured layer I create a transfer print from a large sheet of oil paint covered plastic. The plastic is hung vertically and parallel to the canvas surface so I can use my hands to transfer the oil paint onto the canvas. The textured surface allows for subtle variations to occur. The vertical lines present in the paintings are actually gestural marks produced by my knuckles. To me, I compare each layer of these paintings to that of a musical chord, and I want the paintings to come together like a song or reverberation of a noise.

KB: I think this is largely how I imagined them being made, this meticulous but also playful series of processes… I also like how they’re simultaneously about removing the artist’s hand, and how your hands are so literally embedded in the making and in what would be the closest thing to a gesture present in these works.

SC: It is rare for me to use brushes in the studio. Instead, I consciously choose to use unconventional tools or processes where the outcomes are to some extent fortuitous. It’s not my aim to create paintings that appear readymade or for the surfaces to resemble a replica of the natural world. Alternatively, I’m interested in poetically translating my surroundings, distilling it and presenting to the viewer an essence of my environment. Whilst the vertical knuckle marks can be viewed as gestural, they could also be interpreted as abrasions, folds, gouges, lacerations or scores.

Detail: TRNSFR This Is Paradise, 2022

KB: The colors are fantastic. For me they speak of chemical and natural processes, the patina of copper, mold on old wood, mineral accumulations, and so on…are you inspired by any particular sources for these color choices?

SC: I’ve always been interested in the natural patina of outdoor surfaces, such as walls in industrial areas that are murky and heavily stained due to years of pollution. I like looking at the ground on a rainy day and seeing where oily stains have caused further discolouration of the cement. I like looking at areas of erosion, and taking note of how colours naturally fade over time. The colours in my paintings are applied in a sort of topographical manner whilst looking down onto the canvas, in much the same way that we view an area of land on Google Maps, or as if we are looking down upon a dystopian landscape. The colours have certainly been applied and manipulated to capture an essence of decay, erosion or other-worldliness.

KB: As you can imagine, I’m also a big fan of those everyday visual phenomena… I have a habit of snapping pictures of random bits of covered up graffiti, or old basketball court surfaces, etc. It’s amazing how human accumulation can mimic things like fungus or mineral sediments…

SC: I think our habitual environment is an endless source of inspiration. There’s an infinite value and mystery inherent in the most humble things, such as the accumulation of stickers on electrical boxes or the endless layers of graffiti on public walls. I am forever absorbing and documenting such phenomena. Capturing the essence of our everyday environment and culture is a continual pursuit of mine. It goes without saying, I’m fascinated by phenomenology, and this pursuit of distilling an experience or sensation.

Detail: TRNSFR This Is Paradise, 2022

KB: Also, the sides are so crisp and clean. Can you talk about this decision as well, insofar as how it situates the painting as largely flat, as an image that’s part of rational object? Does that make sense? I’ve become very conscious of the edges in my work over the past few years, how their treatment situates the paintings in different object-hoods… seeing your process shots, with the works laying flat with wet paint poured on them, it seems like quite the feat to keep those edges so crisp with so much liquid around!

SC: Absolutely, the sharpness of the canvas edge is a planned component to this suite of TRNSFR paintings. The edge acts like a boundary, separating the surface from the stretcher whilst further detaching the canvas to that of the physical wall from where it is hung. I am conscious of the observers role in activating the painting, by both moving around the canvas, inspecting it from multiple angles, distances, and under different conditions of light. I feel that the edge is a particularly vulnerable part to a painting, for it is often the first port of call where the viewer will scrutinise and assess the paintings craftsmanship. Fundamentally, the edge accentuates the materiality of the surface, heightening the perception of a transcendental space.

KB: I think that clarification is going to be really helpful for folks viewing the works digitally, to better understand their specific object-hood. You’ve been really generous with describing the works and how they’re made. Is there anything else you’d like to touch on about them? Is there one clue you’d want to give a viewer to enable them to appreciate the works in a more intimate way?

SC: Theres a subtle reference in these works to my past solo exhibition ‘Dance Between The Raindrops,’ which was held last year at Adam Cohen’s A Hug From The Art World in Chelsea. If you look closely enough at TRNSFR Fireworks or TRNSFR Push Pull, you will see subtle raindrops of paint. Whilst their presence may seem arbitrary, they are in fact reasoned additions to the works. The paintings in Dance Between The Raindrops were made by spraying the base layers with diluted paint, whereas in this suite of TRNSFR paintings I solely poured and puddled the paint. The subtle droplets of colour that are hidden within these paintings are quiet and perform like gentle whispers to the works that preceded them.

Installation view: TRNSFR This Is Paradise, 2022

KEVIN HARMAN on STEVEN COX

The paintings establish themselves as genuine decoys to a fatigued sublime, perhaps deflecting the viewers route via peripheral otherness. Making a wish before blowing out the candles only to be jarred out of your shamanic moment by candles that reignite again and again. Time to rethink the wish and the approach method.

Power pylon breaks horizon frequency static, portrait format, I’m a digital human close by viewing these warm works that leave me cold on the approach. Can’t see these paintings without tuning into some audio scape on the Fritz. These works are well made for sure, precise and controlled within a set of rules whilst inviting in some agreeable chance.

Staring at an old 80s tv screen, adjusting the aerial and knobs to get a clearer picture and get rid of that noise. If I sit over there, it might help. Eventually settling on what you believe is the best you’re gonna get, commence filling in transmission gaps, tolerance grows thin but it does grow, back to shoogling the antenna for another go.

Perseverance-favourability and focus provides great reward. Here I am whiteness and participant of old school meditations lashing away desire and immediacy. There is no seduction here, no buffoonery, no obvious attempt to dupe or titillate for cheap gains, it’s a serious job feeding the hounds of hell knowing pot noodles get bigger but the sachet remains the same. As we sacrifice our paintings to the art bloodline, at the same time, somewhere another crash test dummy is being loaded up.

Whatever the intention, it’s a curious meandering.

Steven Cox
TRNSFR Scrub, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas
29.5 x 23.6 inches (75 x 60 cm)

Detail: TRNSFR Scrub, 2022

Installation view: TRNSFR Scrub, 2022

CHRIS HOOD on TRNSFR PUSH PULL

The tight registry of intentions and gestures in TRNSFR Push Pull read like an artifact. Compressed somehow through time or atmosphere, the painting appears to have landed seemingly with little intervention. As its title infers, the modernist activity of its creation is made explicit and its material qualities pronounced. Soft shifts of pearlescent baby magenta blend to lilac and creamy melon in a delicate stucco-like skin. The troughs and valleys of which provide a subtle ground to catch and cluster glossy black swaths of tar-thick pigment. The result is an overall serene autonomy from a distance while pulling the viewer into a microcosm of texture and turning activity that exists in the detail. One imagines seeing a cracked sidewalk or moldy tree bark with a renewed beauty. The strength of the work lies in an implied power of unseen forces that have acted upon it. Weather scratched, scraped, eroded or imploded the surface stands resolved. It evokes a quality of something that has existed previously and will continue on unperturbed by the changing conditions around it.

Steven Cox
TRNSFR Push Pull, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas
29.5 x 23.6 inches (75 x 60 cm)

Detail: TRNSFR Push Pull, 2022