They say that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Pointless. But what about paintings about architecture, huh? How about abstract images that follow the geometric machinations of our built environment? Nothing pointless about that, if this show of Léon Wuidar’s painting is anything to go by.
The Belgian artist’s work is heavily influenced by architecture, full of sharp lines and angles that flow into each other and bump and interact and zig and zag, and they're lovely.
The earlier work downstairs isn’t quite so sharp and geometric. In the 1960s you can spot the influence of abstract elders like Paul Klee, or the muted colours of Max Ernst. Everything is a bit more bodily, physical, limb-like, full of eyes and teeth and arms and legs. They’re not spectacular paintings, but by the end of the decade, things get refined, reduced, simplified into bold little interactions of line and shape. Triangles, rectangles, arches and doorways, all rendered in gorgeous shades of blue and ochre. They’re like blueprints for perfect buildings that will never be built.
Two works tucked away by the lifts are stunning, especially the blue painting, but the best stuff is upstairs. These slightly later paintings are bolder, brighter, simpler. One looks like a road seen from the sky, all grey and black with criss-crossing dotted lines, another is like a sketch of a tennis court. They’re so bold and graphic that they veer into modernist poster design, but that’s not a particularly bad thing, really.
They’re about our environment, the spaces we use, the places we live. And really, they’re just beautiful, incredibly precise, elegant explorations of form and colour, and that's some architecture that's worth dancing about.
