Misfits in Harmony #1

Curator

Jonathan Thomson

In his tremendously influential little book “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” published in 1914 by the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, the artist/author notes that the two things that drive an artist away from ‘literal’ art and towards more purely artistic aims are first, the impossibility, and in art, the uselessness, of attempting to render an object exactly; and second, the desire to give the object full expression. This seems to describe the motivation behind Clifton Pang’s “Misfits in Harmony 1”. Many different elements - lines, either drawn freehand with wristy gesture or straight ruled, curves, blocks of solid colour, geometric shapes and forms made up of layers of text (no doubt collectively the misfits of the title), are brought together into a wholly abstract non-objective composition. Like music, in this we can discern its rhythms, harmonies, cadences and colours.