Reasonable Adjustments

The works of the British artist Bobby Dowler couple a bold, forceful use of colour with a process of assembling, cutting and overlayering materials that challenges the narrativity and illusionism normally associated with conventional painting. The uneven brushwork, the fluctuating density of  impasto and the array of materials he uses in his compositions are counterpointed by the somewhat desacralized geometric forms—quadrilaterals in the case at hand—that balance the prevailing thrust of fluidity and chance.

By incorporating pre-worked materials and discarded paintings by friends as well as other amateur artists—often left to languish, victims of the changing schools of painterly thought and fashions—Dowler not only works with the remnants of post-industrial culture and an economy of means, but also splits open the timeframe in the resulting painting-objects. The succession of layers and windows would, at once, seem to replicate the dynamism of the artist’s self-imposed sequential process when it comes to approaching his work: gathering and then combining the elements underpinning the work in consecutive ateliers, even in the exhibition space, until coming up with a solution.

In Reasonable Adjustments Dowler has assembled different-sized stretchers in pairs and then applied colour uniformly across the relined canvases. In the recalibration and symbiosis arising from these combinations, the contours of these adjustments, however blurred, begin to emerge. But Reasonable Adjustments also seems to incorporate those necessary adjustments from his more generic practice. From a historicist perspective, the fluidity and detachment of his colour fields outweigh the constraints of excessive formalism of certain art movements, delivering a laconic critique of modernism’s promise. From a social perspective, in a society whose systemic flaws have been exposed, the artist grounds his material practice in recycling the leftover works and materials of other artists as well as on regeneration from his own production. From a no less important generational focus, depending on who you ask, it might appear reasonable or not that Bobby has deviated from the trade of building steel structures which he learned from his father. Instead he chose to try his luck with lighter materials and build blocks of colour which he cuts and assembles using scissors and stapler, the tools his mother used in her trade as a seamstress. All these changes speak of a progression, a journey towards maturity consistent with a clearly defined artistic vision, yet without breaking faith with optimism, irony and an almost childlike formalization.