Painting in 20 Parts

“I am not a monochrome painter. I do much more specific work, I am an artist who creates a gray painting.” Since 1969 Alan Charlton has obsessively been painting only gray paintings, but they are all different. They are composed of clear geometrical elements, in this case twenty rectangles, which form pictorial elements. In the true spirit of minimal art, Charlton does not compose hierarchically but deploys equal components in a serial structure. Charlton exclusively uses the neutral color gray and so expresses an attitude that refuses all expressive and illusionist tendencies. Gray neither means presence nor absence, neither depth nor width, neither illusionary space nor material surface. Gray is the representative of color per se. Since Charlton’s paintings do not refer to anything but themselves they make their own objective quality their theme, and can be directly experienced as real forms in space. Viewers devote their attention to the relations between the form of the painting, its boundaries and the wall behind and around the work, which is background, frame, and also part of the painting all at the same time. It is only the sum of all the blurred impressions that leaves the viewer with an idea of the whole, and in our minds we put together all the unlinked parts to form one entity.