Jonathan Wateridge: Monument, Wilkinson Gallery

Jonathan Wateridge, artist and hyper-realist painter, has created an eerie exhibition of monumental works where access is denied. Held in limbo, the visitor moves between driveways, waiting rooms, lifts, garage doors, gates and fleeting moments of quiet simplicity; unable to really enter any of the spaces.
In this, Wateridge’s first solo exhibition at the Wilkinson Gallery, London, the group of paintings entitled ‘Monument’ respond principally to Wateridge’s experiences in Los Angeles last year. While we can raise questions about how Wateridge felt about America and perhaps the inaccessible boundaries of society, the works are also an extension of familiar Wateridge themes from his earlier constructed scenes.
Empting out and paring back his environment, this exhibition is simplistic in its design, but inspiring in its emphasis on the formal aspects of paint and epic scale. Make a bee-line for ‘Monument’ itself, a large stone sculpture which looks like it was crafted out of the surrounding rock. And look out for the suspenseful works ‘Gate’ and ‘Garage Doors’ where opaque blackness masks what is beyond the barriers.