Close Cousins (Stephen Buckley, Paintings)

For more than forty years Stephen Buckley, (b. 1944 Leicester, England) has concerned himself with addressing the major themes of the twentieth century through a personal style oscillating between the materiality of Kurt Schwitters, the dandyism of Francis Picabia, and the intellectual rigor of Marcel Duchamp. He takes the two most basic components of a conventional painting (canvas and stretcher) and makes multi-dimensional constructions, joins groups of single canvases together in overlapping structures, makes shaped canvases, cuts a stretcher with a variegated edge, stitches and weaves together strips of canvas, patches pieces of canvas onto another support, and adds cardboard tubing, rope, found objects and cut-out shapes. In the 1970s and 1980s, Buckley saw extended prominence in the art press, starting with claims that he was "the Punk Rock of contemporary painting" and ending with the title of "the ubiquitous Stephen Buckley." Since then, he has made some of his most compelling paintings, lush pop canvases full of symbols and color, a far cry from the pared-down, industrial feel of some of his early works.