Phillip Allen’s paintings have orientated themselves around the western tradition of the toing-and-froing between virtual space and material surfaceness; whether this is the building up heavy surfaces of paint through a prolonged pictorial process, as in his Deepdrippings series, or creating complex arrangements of shapes and colour as in the Tonic for Choice works.
More recently, Allen’s work has upended the notion of facture by painting onto uneven polystyrene surfaces to produce compositions that seemingly take on the structure of microorganisms or mitochondria. Allen’s paintings always leave us with a semi-conscious impression that they are somehow pressing into the space slightly in front of its material self.
Philip Allen (b. 1967, London, UK) lives and works in London, UK.