A Romance of Many Dimensions Print - Limited Edition of 1

151 hand-made copper-plate etchings by Bella Easton; hand-cut by Iavor Lubomirov. “...buildings, studied in their functional and plastic aspects – all that is accidental or merely stylistic being relegated to its proper minor place – emerge under a new guise...” - Frederick Etchells, from his introduction to his 1927 translation of Le Corbusier’s Vers une Architecture. A Romance of Many Dimensions Iavor Lubomirov and Bella Easton In 1919 Mondrian applied to image-making the reductivist logic of the engineer (which was then surging into fashion), stripping the pictorial plane back to its most fundamental element, and thus giving the grid its proper, emblematic place within Modernist painting. In the late 1970s, the architects Rogers and Piano exhibited conventionally internal structural elements, such as pipes and supports, on the outside of the Centre Pompidou. Throughout the 20th Century, a growing number of artists such as these have been showing us the back of the canvas and the inside of the object. For millennia before, the grid was largely a compositional tool to the image and object maker, used for ordering the plane and the solid prior to commencing the work itself. It commonly played the same part in representational drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture, as the stretcher plays to the canvas, or the scaffolding to a building. The grid remained subservient to a final image, even when used explicitly: the horizontal and vertical guidelines which delineate visual content in ancient Egyptian tomb decorations and Far Eastern calligraphy; the straight line and arc compositions of ancient Greek and Roman architecture; even the divine geometry of Islamic art since the 7th Century. In 1435 Alberti asked that his rigorous mathematical treatise on linear perspective, De Pictura, “be accepted as the product not of a pure mathematician but only a painter”. The Modern ascendancy of Science and Mathematics (but especially their physical incarnations in technology) as sources of visual aesthetics, logic, discourse and production, coincide with their evolving educational and socio-economic divergence from the Arts and Humanities. This divergence, far from diminishing interaction between the two, has continued to feed a growing curiosity for science and technology in the work of contemporary artists – such as Tyson, and Eliasson. Echoing each other clearly across this divide are the works of an Oxford Mathematician and a Royal Academy Painter. Lubomirov and Easton take calm stock of the visual and compositional purpose of the grid established last century. They accept its validity as an overt presence, but use it to express their own as well as more general emerging contemporary concerns. While the grid remains central to their work, it is re-examined as a support for a larger visual aim. In Easton’s looming wall panels, a system of geometry orders the repetition of hundreds of hand-painted and printed squares in a way that establishes a connection between images of architectural spaces and the pattern of the work itself. Lubomirov grows sculptural pieces through a slow and laborious process of layering of grids drawn on thin materials, creating a spatial distortion of flat geometry. Their work is radically different in conception, execution and material, but achieves a harmony through a common use of the grid to explore the role of the hand of the artist in the production of multiples. For both the need for a precise structure is not an end in itself, but a way of containing and inviting chance, just beyond the edge of human ability. They are thus able to ask relevant questions about making that are not couched in nostalgia, but are part of a larger resurgent discussion about craftsmanship and the role of the artist in the production of work. Their new collaboration sees a print run of 151 hand-made coloured copper plate etchings by Easton, transformed into a three dimensional geometric structure by Lubomirov's scalpel. With each consecutive print, Easton builds a careful variation in tone - the painter's traditional tool for creating an illusion of dimensionality. This in turn is playfully rendered as actuality by Lubomirov, while his structural compositions respond conversationally to the geometric patterning of Easton's prints. Artist Biographies Bella Easton studied BA Painting at Winchester School of Art (1993) and PG Dip at The Royal Academy Schools (2000), followed by a print fellowship at City and Guilds of London Art School (2002). Easton has shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions including: Butterfly Effect, curated by Juan Bolivar for Artkapsule at, Koleksiyon, London (2012); Scotoma, Sluice Art Fair, London (2011); The Invisible Dog, Brooklyn, NYC (2010); Crash, Charlie Dutton Gallery, London (2010); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (most years since 1998); ASC Gallery, London; Class Of, Waterfront Gallery, UCS, East Anglia; The Threadneedle Prize, London; SV02, Studio Voltaire, London; Puskar Blues, The British Council in New Delhi, India (2004); and Rundgang, Hardenbergstraße, Berlin. Her installation Dog Kennel Hill was shown with ALISN, London in 2011. She was a Finalist in The Celeste Prize 2010 and Saatchi Drawing Prize 2011. Iavor Lubomirov studied MMath Mathematics at Oxford University (2000) and BA Fine Art at University of East London (2005). He is an independent curator and co-founder of ALISN (2007) and Lubomirov-Easton Gallery (2012). In 2012 his work was selected by Alfredo Crameroti, director of MOSTYN, for Saatchi Online's 100 Curators 100 Days. In 2011 his online portfolio was selected for the Saatchi Online's special curated "Art Paris" collection. He has exhibited in solo and group shows at Vegas Gallery (2012), Angus-Hughes Gallery (2011), The Magnificent Basement (2010), Calvert 22 (2008) and The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2007).

Printmaking:Etching on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:1

Size:12.6 W x 15.7 H x 3.5 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.