Simon Rankin
Blind Spot
13.03.18 – 31.03.18 

These paintings bring together painted gestures, graphic mark making, and digital distortion by using a cut/paste visual language. They display a tension between the order of machine made and the fluidity of handmade. Repeated forms, distorted geometries and broken fields of colour are combined to render glitches of the human visual system.

Temporary visual impairments such as ‘flash blindness’ and ‘after images’ inform the works in ‘Blind Spot’. These often occur after exposure to bright light or vivid images and can stay for some time after the stimulus has ceased, slowly fading.

This body of work implies these transitional visual states. The paintings aim to interrupt the eye’s need for certainty, causing the viewer to shift focus from one image to another, emphasising the in-between state of visual experience.

‘Blind Spot’ refers to a visual disturbance signaling an ominous transitional state, it also refers to a failure to exercise proper judgment. (Also possibly appropriate).

Simon Rankin lives and works in Melbourne, dividing studio work between Brunswick and Footscray.