Phil Dobson
Warrior Studios, Arch 264, 241 Coldharbour Lane, SW9 8RR.
About the artist
Phil is an abstract painter. Recently he has been making installations with video projections derived from his paintings with commissioned sound or music.
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Artist’s Statement & Bio
Although now a painter, Phil believes practice is cyclic, returning to earlier themes, in his case the tension between 2 and 3 dimensions, leading him to move into installation and projection with sound. With occasional references to Marshall McLuhan’s mosaic or field approach and the dynamic nature of acoustic space, this would seem a natural development.
But in any case he sees painting as a time-based activity and this view is further enhanced by his technique which involves sanding layers of acrylic to reveal underlying pattern, as in the processes of erosion. The static nature of a painting would seem to belie the processes of its making.
The projections are derived from digitally manipulated images of his paintings, thus a further tension is created between the analog nature of painting and the digital world. This again returns to an earlier impulse to somehow clarify the decision-making process in making art by generating it using simple self-made systems. Moving between these polarities is also presented in the flux apparent in the projections. However a third source of tension is created from moving between the immaterial world of digital technology and the wish to make something material, wether it is with paint or, as in recent installations, with relatively cheap building products.
Phil studied for a BA in architecture in Oxford before taking a BA in Art and History of Art at Reading University.
Products are still from a video to Music by Tolerance Manoeuvre. Watch the full video here
Artist’s CV
2020
Anima Mundi, Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale, Regaining a Paradise Lost.
2019
Sequences, Paintings and videos, The Agency Gallery, London
Light On Light Through, Installation, Seitenblick Gallery, Bremen
2017
We Are Carbon, Installation, Testbed 1, London
2016
Gutenberg Galaxy, Installation, Jikji Festival, Cheongju, S. Korea
2015
What Is Done Cannot Be Undone, installation (with Warrior Studios), Ovada, Oxford
2012
Residency and exhibition, Sitterwerk Foundation, St Gallen,
