Extract from the introduction by Bryan Robertson-
The new drawings and reliefs by Alan Reynolds come from the period 1988-90 and are hung in this exhibition with a compact introductory selection of earlier works to show the artists origins. These new drawings on handmade paper, checkerboard areas of squares contained within a variable range of tonal densities, have their own subtlety of modulation and balance and pose questions: are the sequences of squares based on an overall module? Could the white or grey squares extend beyond the edges of the square sheets which contain them, or is each composition self-contained? The calm lateral composure and unforced shallow space of each of these drawings makes such questions seem irrelevant. But in fact only six greys are in play, built up with 9H to H pencil shading, and the sequences from light to dark are in a canon-like formation, as in a music canon where the second part is identical to the first but reversed in sequence, like a mirror-image.
The white reliefs markedly extend this artist's earlier preoccupations. Each relief is built up with two preliminary coats of primer-sealer and four coats of white emulsion paint on 1/4 inch conservation boards on a birch ply base. The element of third dimension is extremely slight but so finely calculated that the composition in each relief is still directional: viewed at an angle of 45 degrees, the shallow structure flattens out.
Reynolds has explored a new and quite monumental calm in these reliefs, notably in the compositions in which horizontal rectangles predominate. In others, small squares appear to be trapped or securely contained, at one side or the other, by these grand horizontal areas, to be released or to exist within an open space at the opposite side of the white relief. All the reliefs have a majestic equilibrium of their own, an extraordinary, loaded simplicity of formal means and a fresh spaciousness. They are beautiful contemplative objects and give out the sense, the feeling of a distillation of knowledge, an extreme concentration of aesthetic experience.
When considered one after another, the reliefs also remind me yet again of the way in which highly gifted artists are wasted in this country. For surely Reynolds should have been commissioned by now to make a relief-mural for a public building? If money and site can be found for a big Richard Serra minimal sculpture at the new Broadgate development, for instance, why cannot a suitable wall be found for Reynolds in one of the new buildings? There are of course other sites elsewhere, both in London and England as a whole and certainly other artists deserving of public patronage. But the art of Alan Reynolds could illuminate and give a coherence to a public space in a unique way.
Around 1980, Reynolds made a series of studies in a notebook for a mural panel in aluminium, c. 12 feet by 10 feet for a hospital. The scheme was speculative but the artist felt that a hospital would be the ideal place for his projected design because it would be simple and relatively inexpensive to put up, and because the arrangement of squares and rectangles might have a calming or even uplifting effect through the purity of means involved and the capacity of the material to reflect light and to become changed, structurally, by light. As Reynolds has said of the scheme "It is the sort of thing that happens in Holland or Germany, but not often here". What does not happen in Holland or Germany however, is the reign of any political dogma which forces hospitals to cut down on basic resources, if not close altogether, let alone commission art.
Reynolds is of course a social and political idealist, not consciously trying to embody any social ideals in his work, but hoping that as a tonic side effect his art may give out some sense of idealism, balance, order, refinement of means, optimism even. He would like to help make a better world. Constructing his painted reliefs and drawings is the best means that he knows of contributing some sort of balance and composure to what is plainly an unbalanced and troubled society around him.
I first saw paintings and drawings by Alan Reynolds in the fifties when he was the golden boy of post-neo romanticism in England. His paintings of yellow cornfields under blazing electric blue skies struck a chord in the English sensibility. For four or five years, Reynolds was fêted for his meticulous drawings of plants, grasses and ears of wheat, in close up, and paintings of cornfields which, however evocative of English ruralism, also contrived to be severely divided between sky and land, in two strong rectangles. For Reynolds, the corn fields were already in his own mind slightly Ernst-like. The drawings also showed an obsession with formal structure which went beyond a merely pictorial representation.
