There’s a definite stripy theme to London’s summer painting shows (see also: Bridget Riley and Ian Davenport). With his richly striated canvases, Juan Uslé brings some deep notes of Spanish romanticism and a touch of elemental tussle to the party. The gallery is dark, as are the paintings. Horizontal bands comprising rich inky indigos and blacks provide a brooding, Rothko-like intensity. It’s the flashes of electric blue and orange that draw you in. And it’s here, with your nose to the wall, where the close work of Uslé’s deceptively simple abstraction really impresses. Nothing is quite as it seems. The stripes, variously hand-drawn and masked, translucent and opaque, are interrupted by overlays, fringes and frills of colour – evidence of what was laid down before. His broad stripes appear broken up by pale horizontals: these staccato points are where the artist has released pressure on the brush.
This is highly rhythmic painting, in step with body, mind and eye. Uslé lives for part of the year in New York and it comes as no surprise to learn that he paints after dark, with just the city and his heartbeat as a soundtrack. These lush canvases pulse with night music. Other works on show are inspired by journeys on water close to the artist’s Spanish home. In these paintings, the horizontals read as stacked horizons, the fluctuating brush strokes as light shimmering on water. Uslé is a master of apparently self-contained painting that reaches out into the world. He proves that stripes aren’t necessarily simple.
Martin Coomer