A catalogue of paintings and reviews from “Constant within the change”

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Gary Wragg, “Promenade” (1978), acrylic, pastel, charcoal, and Rohplex on canvas, 70 x 175 in

In 1978, the esteemed British curator Bryan Robertson saw fit to compare the promise of painter Gary Wragg’s emergent career with that of the young Jackson Pollock. It is a comparison lent some weight by the fact that Robertson had written a monograph and organized a major exhibition devoted to Pollock’s work when he was Director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery.

Quoted within the pages of the recent two-volume survey of Wragg’s career, however, the comparison jars. The career of the English painter has been considerably longer and more sustained than his American predecessor (the survey, Constant Within The Change: Gary Wragg, Five Decades of Paintings: A Comprehensive Catalogue by Sam Cornish, spans from very early pre-student works of 1963 through to 2013), but what will certainly strike the reader is Wragg’s failure to achieve an appreciable level of international recognition. Indeed, while it was likely that Wragg’s innovative expansion of painting’s medium-specific possibilities underlay Robertson’s excitement, these self-same qualities might be taken to account for Wragg’s relative obscurity today.

You can read the whole review here http://hyperallergic.com/142628/modernism-without-irony-the-paintings-of-gary-wragg/

Nicholas Usherwood has reviewed Constant Within The Change’ in the April edition of Galleries magazine:

Bending Zones & Shifting Accents (Magician’s Hand II), 2005-6, oil on canvas, 249 x 305cm

‘Tenacity is an underrated virtue in an artist’s ultimate recognition: Gary Wragg has always shown it in abundance and now, across a career spanning over five decades, he is finally getting some wider recognition for his hugely determined pursuit of a highly personal and intensely physical ‘take’ on abstract expressionism – a comprehensive two volume catalogue of his paintings entitled ‘Constant Within The Change’ (published by Sansom & Co) and a show at the 30th Floor Gallery, Clifford Chance … these volumes lend convincing support to the idea that it really is about time Wragg got support from the public sector that his achievement deserves.’

Mark Sheerin reviews ‘I Cheer a Dead Man’s Sweetheart’ at the De La Warr Pavilion for www.artsdesk.com:

Blue / Yellow Streak, Oil and Oil-Stick on Canvas 170 x 152 cm

‘Gary Wragg could stop you in your tracks with one of his large-scale canvases in which no colour or mix of colours is considered excessive. In Blue/Yellow Streak he substitutes the lapis lazuli and the gold leaf of early Renaissance painting with a searing lemon yellow and an overwhelming field of pure blue.  Thick paint offers sensual pleasures, while square brush strokes make the whole solid and satisfying. It is as balanced as the modernist building which houses this show.’

You can read the whole review here http://www.theartsdesk.com/visual-arts/i-cheer-dead-mans-sweetheart-de-la-warr-pavilion

Dan Coombs has enthustically reviewed the exhibition at Clifford Chance celebrating the publication of Constant Within The Change for www.abstractcritical.com :

Stepladder & Standing Man, 1996, acrylic and oil on canvas, 236 x 206cm

‘There is something powerful about the way Wragg refuses to let go, refuses to give up possession of his motifs. Yet paradoxically the strongly willed nature of Wragg’s paintings is at odds with their open-ended character. They don’t give way to calculation, perfection or resolution and in this can seem frustrating. The hard wrought gestures however begin to make sense when you understand their struggle, despite appearances, is in fact towards a lightness of being, and forms that at first might seem rasping actually give way to a dense pleasure in sensuous immediacy.’

You can read the whole review here  http://abstractcritical.com/article/constant-within-the-change-gary-wragg/