Visual language from The East

 

THE Citizens Studios in Assembly Street, Leith, has been providing studio space for artists since the late Eighties but it is one of Edinburgh's most recently opened gallery spaces. The present exhibition is of paintings by Christopher Ku.

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His 15 years were spent in Hong Kong, then studied in Taiwan and subsequently came to Scotland, to Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen. He did his post-graduate work at the Royal College of Art in London and is now back in Scotland.

Christopher Ku is a subtle experimenter in paint who creates ambiguous, often sharply delineated forms which stand out starkly upon a ground of paint which conveys space and depth. Each form is like a word in a half-understood language of the unconscious mind, sometimes prominent, sometimes fading. Ku absorbs and transmutes influences from East and West; in a number of his paintings there are claw-like shapes which could be interpreted equally as transformations of Picasso bulls or fragments of Chinese characters. Or as both.

Symbolic ambiguities extend to every aspect of his work; nothing is straightforward, nothing can be easily described. The poetry of Ku's visual language is underlined by the care with which he composes his titles. Often they reflect a somber philosophy yet this is not simple pessimism: Ku's spaces may be hidden from sunlight but they are fertile.

Murdo Macdonald