Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam

With layer painted upon layer using the ancient medium of tempera, these intimate paintings come about slowly in the relative isolation of the studio space. The surfaces are even and rarely do they betray strokes of the brush. The colours are subdued and, together with a method that is reminiscent of icon painting, they create a somewhat meditative air around them. By contrast, the newspaper clippings report on the civil rights movement’s street protests in the US. These geometrical but not necessarily rectilinear paintings originally evolved out of diagrams mapping people in the New York art world involved with political and social activism. Collective social imaginaries and endeavours are documented and translated by an individual whose subjectivity spans from the sharing of groups-Doug Ashford was a core member of legendary art collective Group Material (1979-1996) -to solitary reflection. Like Gilles Deleuze’s “abstract machines”, the resulting delicate diagrams show relations between forces, charting powers-pictorial and others. (source: handout accompanying Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies, Tensta konsthall 12.1-22.4.2012)
More literature: Photoworks May-October 2012, Doug Ashford: Six Moments in 1967, Claire Grace p.44-49