CHOICES UP NOW IN LONDON: FINBAR WARD | IN ABSENCE
 2016
Paul Carey-Kent

It hardly sounds feasible to merge Robert Ryman, Steven Spielberg and Carlos Cruz-Diez, yet they all came to mind at Finbar Ward’s novel sculptural installation of 300 small paintings. Ryman as the face of each is a deceptively painterly monochrome, predominantly white but not without colour – a framing device of artist-ground cobalt violet. Spielberg because the obsessive line-up of fin-shaped canvasses brought a certain film to mind. Cruz-Diez because if you walked past the serried whitenesses then turned back, you saw the scuffed and contingent rear sides of Ward’s offcuts of found wood, many of them festooned with a notational ‘b’ for back, setting up a contrast worthy of a Physiochromie.