This volume catalogues Keith Coventry’s series of complex black paintings, which are produced by slavishly following a set of rules that safeguards against aesthetic or ethical judgement.
Keith Coventry is known for his works which co-opt philosophical or art-theoretical positions as a way of testing and questioning the boundaries of such ideas.
His newest body of work, The Deontological Pictures, is an extension of this approach. These variations of black paintings – some much darker and others with undulations of lighter greys and browns – are produced by following a set of rules and adding black pigment to rainwater collected in Coventry’s studio from a leaky roof.
The resulting mixture is then brushed onto the jute with a broom, left to dry flat on the floor, whereupon the material is stretched and framed. They have, the artist claims, ‘made themselves’.