Born in Johannesburg and based in London, Selma Parlour explores the illusory surface of painting through infinitely careful and subtle means. The delicate and beautiful Looks Like a Plan exemplifies her approach. Its white canvas is filled with a series of blank rectangles in warm tones of brown, orange, yellow, teal, and tan. They are painted in thin, even washes of colour, with nested borders of increasing lightness that create the appearance of recessed panels or alcoves within the picture plane. Parlour removes the oil binder from her paint so that it becomes parched like chalk pastel. No stroke of the artist’s brush is visible: so meticulous is her technique that the painting assumes the perfect flatness of a print. At the same time, the architectural, window-like rectangular shapes generate an undeniable illusion of depth, and implicitly recall the fictive spaces of stage and picture frame. Even as Parlour wrongfoots us with her work’s flawless surface, these glowing, seemingly backlit panes of colour remind us of painting’s function as a window onto another world.
Post Lot Text
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.
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