December 2nd 2008, Jacobson Howard Gallery is proud to present The Cadiz Caprices, a series of new abstract works by the renowned English painter William Tillyer.

The Cadiz Caprices, at once the latest proposition in a long-term investigation into the nature of representational traditions and formal problems, and an exuberant cycle of free-flowing abstract paintings relating to the artist’s engagement with Andalucia, are no exception to this tendency.

The paintings and water colors which make up the new series recall the complex of impressions and experiences the artist gained during his residency, in the Castillo de Santa Catalina, Cadiz, in 2006, at the invitation of the municipal government. On one level, as with Goya’s majestic Caprichos, (from which the series derives its name), the works offer an abstracted panorama of Spanish life. From the flowing edges and swirling forms of works like Viva to the underlying menace of Falla, there are presented a wide range of impressions rooted in the movements, colors and ambiences Tillyer observed in the Iberian peninsula.

The more strictly formal elements of the pieces work both into and against these subject-based observations. The works consist of grids of industrial steel cladding suspended in front of a graduating or flatly coloured wooden support. Across the rigid geometric structure of the steel grid, the freely applied acrylic paint seems variously to float, sink, ooze or drip as it interacts with the supporting structure, sometimes piercing through it with trompe l’oeil illusionism and sometimes overpowering it through the sheer thickness of its application. All this serves on the one hand to undermine the integrity of the picture plane as a site of resolute meaning.

As such, The Cadiz Caprices manage to simultaneously lure and withstand the viewer’s gaze, inviting one to participate in their compelling dramatics, whilst remaining the self-declaring products of artifice. In his own words Tillyer’s work points towards a painting which ‘must again embrace the world of illusory depth’, having, ‘absorbed and annexed the lessons of constructivist reality’.

A fully illustrated catalogue with texts by John Yau and Saul Ostrow will be published to coincide with the exhibition. For further details please contact gallery@jacobsonhoward.com.