This week, Zavitz Gallery features Above the Surface, “an array of coloured photograms,” by Katie Holmes. It opened on Sept. 15 and runs until Sept. 19. I wandered through the gallery discussing the art with my friend Anthony Campbell (“Tony”), a painter, film buff, and mature student – “I’m over seventy, put it that way” – studying art history. Here is a selection from that conversation.
Tony: Well, they’re prints, aren’t they? Are they photo prints? Oh no, she’s just used black backing. She’s pasted onto a black backing. They’re kind of nice. Nice colours. The theme seems to be they’re like an eye.I like the colours she uses. Is it a woman?
Will: Yes.
Tony: Now why did I assume it was a woman? The colour scheme? That’s interesting. Why did I assume it was a woman?
Will: And then there’s this big wall.
Tony: Some artists, they take a theme and they just burn it out. They do it, and do it, and do it, until they’ve explored all the possibilities of that theme. And that’s what she’s done here. I don’t tend to do that. I don’t paint full-time. I tend to move from one painting to the next and they’re very different, whereas a student like this, who’s working much more intensely than I am, tends to take a theme like this – like the eye, or a planet – and they explore it fully. I don’t do that. But we both are working in very different circumstances. No, I like the colours. I think the colours are lovely.There’s a movie coming out next week and it’s about a woman who gets a transplant. And the transplant enables her mind, her brain, to work one hundred percent.
Will: Lucy?
Tony: Lucy. In Lucy, the movie opens and you see the iris of an eye changing colour. It just looks like that. Would she have…? No, she wouldn’t have seen that. It’s only just come out. But it’s like that. When you watch the preview, you’ll see it’s like that. I quite like them. You can’t just look at an artist and say, “this is wonderful.” They’re exploring new ways of looking at things all the time. I like Scarlett Johansson. She was in Hitchcock with Helen Mirren.
Will: And Anthony Hopkins.
Tony: He was very good. But they were really excellent in that.