In Rob Tucker’s landscapes, we find cargo ships and large houses, the sea and swimming pools. There is a call to distant places contrasted with a sense of immediate proximity. His images, like objects, circulate, and his painting is a game of nesting. His still lifes suggest the possibility of an interior world, as if one could step into these spaces. As he likes to say, you just need to double-click. From canvas to canvas, and from one format to another, his subjects seem to create connections. This awareness of circulation, akin to our experience on the internet, enriches our relationship with the images. The interplay of borders in his work seems to create digital windows, and the frames within the painting allow him to work with compositions in recesses or negative space. Influenced by Morandi’s engravings, the artist seeks to recapture the impression of the plate that marks the beginning of an image on paper. After arranging these blocks of vivid color that simulate an enticing package or a beautiful facade, he delicately paints a fragile flower in a garden, a few waves, or motifs that reveal a spontaneous movement of the hand, a flicker of the eye.
The gesture, broader in his large formats (160x140 cm), is crucial for Tucker, who emphasizes the brushstroke and the layering process. Each canvas is coated with epoxy resin, which “fossilizes” the painting and adds a glossy sheen over these playful lines and bold strokes. This finish perfects the object, faintly recalling the technique of reverse glass painting. The question of surface preparation is important to Tucker, who shares the Pop artists’ fascination, including early works by David Hockney, with surfaces. The vessels he depicts echo the images of desire conveyed by advertising or social media, assimilating them to happiness while simultaneously undermining them, eroded by the juxtaposition of drips, accidents, and drawing. Rob Tucker’s paintings harbor a strange melancholy; the triviality of these subjects, rendered in an almost dramatic fashion, evokes a sense of emptiness surrounding them. With these canvases, we find ourselves confronted with sensitive vessels.
Henri Guette
Art critic, member of AICA, and exhibition curator
