With laser-cut precision, Gerwald Rockenschaub dances between abstraction and decoration. What I mean is that his glistening acrylic constructions are as much works of art as they are decorative objects: halfway between paintings and a Bakelite telephone.
Which isn’t a slight. They’re great. One series is a bunch of black-fronted long rectangles with coloured sides. The colourless abyss at the front is haloed by blue, pink and yellow light. Neat, pretty. The bigger works are like ultra-minimal abstraction done by a computer, purely decorative, totally lovely.
Along the corridor here he’s screwed black acrylic squares directly into the walls in different configurations, making each blank space into a subtle composition.
The smaller works upstairs – white canvases with pursed lips and flower shapes – are painfully naff though, and the sculptural works are just dull. But the works downstairs are heavenly little islands of pure aesthetics. The perfect place to be when the world just gets too ugly and complicated.
