Restless Idiom: A mini-survey of Cousins recent work. Made between 2009-2015.

Abstract

James Cousins’ practice pivots around questions of how a painting might function: how do we understand the status of an image? What systems guide our understanding? What processes could be used to disrupt these assumptions? Restless Idiom is a mini-survey of Cousins recent work. Made between 2009-2015, the exhibited works combine what might otherwise be perceived as contradictory painting concerns: the figurative and the abstract: the illusory and the material. These oppositional qualities are unified to create an optical instability, prompting the eye to constantly move between the representations of familiar flora and fauna images as perceived from afar, and the abstractions of colour and geometry when viewed up close. The result calls into question the certainty of representational conventions. By placing the image into an equilibrial tension with the material effects of particular processes, Cousins creates a fresh encounter with what painting might be and provokes a heightened consciousness of the very act of looking.