Giovanni Giacoia

Review of Garden of Eden, July 2024
Saltmarket, Glasgow (7-28 June 2024)

The work comprising the show was the first collaboration for both artists. It included paintings in various paint-based media and surfaces, ranging from oil on canvas to watercolour on paper. With the landscape as their main subject matter the works were populated by historical figurative references borrowed from art history, magazines, and photography.

When analysing the works presented in the show the viewer became increasingly aware of figures who are constantly interrupted in their performance: appearing stuck in different stages of being or performing. For instance, they are more formed in ‘Blowing’ or unformed in ‘Dive’, fleshy in ‘Roughing it’ or abstract in ‘Gee up’, present or absent in ‘Slumber Party’; occasionally they resemble a scribble or a glyph. The figures in the paintings move between line and painterly marks, between tonal renderings and flat signs, the latter at times descriptive others agitated. The landscape the figures occupy is constantly negotiated through different styles of painting and mark-making; small narrative hooks introduce humour too. For instance, see the flip-flop in the painting called ‘Roughing it’. It is noteworthy that the paintings are layered with two different painterly signatures. The first two paintings encountered in the show were one by Liu ‘Revealing’ and one by Thomas ‘Ruby’. These two paintings give us an insight into their own personal signatures and their ways of handling paint. Their location at the start of the show made a statement or guide to a reading of the rest of the show.

It becomes clear that this is more than a duo-show: the paintings were created as a painting dialogue between two different painting signatures using the same painting support. In fact, the paintings were developed, over a period of three months, as a form of correspondence between the two artists, a sort of pass-the-parcel. The paintings were moved from studio to studio by the artists, back and forth on the train, bus or car. The conversation of multiple hands on the same painted surface has precedents, for instance, the Surrealist’s cadavre exquis (‘exquisite corpse’), also known as ‘picture consequences’, where one person draws on a piece of paper, folds it, passes it to the next one who does the same and so on. Furthermore, in 1984 the show ‘Collaboration – Basquiat Clemente Warhol’ between Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente and Jean Michel Basquiat saw the artists painting, and clashing, their own unique styles on top of the same canvas. However, in Liu-Thomas a sort of synthesis, more than a stylistic clash, is found between the aggressive mark-making of Liu and the reassuring tonal interventions of Thomas. Both painters act as painterly forces but also as iconoclasts, able to change everything or parts of what the previous painter made. Consequently, the paintings operate as a space for inscription, description, and cancellation.

These works do not deliver the promised narrative ‘pregnant moment’ of storytelling rather the historical sources and references are deconstructed and brought into crisis regarding their original meaning. This allows Liu-Thomas to disclose new meanings through an open dialogue, while at the same time leaving traces of the original sources. Ultimately it feels the paintings are asking a series of questions. Was the landscape born before the body or the body before the landscape? What is the genesis of a painting? What is the speed of an image? The paintings sit in an in-between state like a cinematic crossfading where the old image is still visible, and the new one is still not fully formed. Liu-Thomas’ influences can be traced back to artists such as 17th-Century Pieter Paul Rubens, Willem de Kooning of the 20th Century, seeping into the current time of Cecily Brown can be detected in the ongoing conversation.

The works on paper, which are less worked and more provisional, offer further reflection on the oppositions of materials and decision-making. These include watercolours initiated by Thomas, amended by Liu, then sealed by the application of oil paint by Thomas (‘The Wrestlers’) or ink wash compositions by Thomas modified by Liu using a biro in what Liu refers to as etching (‘Gathering’). These material exchanges, beyond the subject reflection, offer an insight into a dialectical conflict and its potential solutions.

The works in the show ask important questions about authorship, signature, and originality; they move painting to a position of vulnerability where the image and the handling of materials by one painter is questioned or assessed by the other. The specific cultural make and gender of the artists could also offer further readings. The Garden of Eden becomes an opportunity to reflect on the origin of a work of art: is the origin in the source materials or is the origin in the subject-matter; is the origin in the trace left by either Liu or Thomas? Is the origin in the green of the landscape or the flesh of the body? Painting is bound to be an historical confrontation and the questions Liu and Thomas ask feel like a record of that process.

Giovanni Giacoia is an art lecturer and artist living and working in Glasgow. Giacoia, a fellow painter residing in the city and trained both locally and internationally, visited the show. Thomas and Liu were excited to share dialogue with his reading of the work.