Emily Platzer

I keep the whole of you in the edges of my eyes

31 January - 4 March 2020

We are pleased to present Emily Platzer’s first solo exhibition I keep the whole of you in the edges of my eyes.

Emerging from a process that is intuitive, methodical and ritualistic, Platzer’s work is a rhythmic evocation of form, energy and colour that transcends mere abstraction or representation.

Her narratives become experiential through a cadence of fluidity and tension, elation and restraint, intimacy and expansion, anchored by intention and temporality.

Harnessing elemental and universal energies through a cyclical journey encompassing the physical and the spiritual, her practice becomes a realm where inception, essence and expression are inseparably entwined.

“Through painting I enter both the physical and psychological space of the canvas, I set an intention and make the painting within one visit. The scale of the work often reflects what is just within arm span reach, connecting the edges of my body to the work. I reach, find an edge but aim to turn inwards. I experience a commonality between painting and shamanic practice. In each process we establish a touchstone, we journey in order to ask a question or receive healing, it is durational, and it follows a rhythm. The sound of the drum draws me into the painting experience and calls me back.

My paintings are temporal. However, I decide colour and prepare paint in advance of entering the work, each colour has its own energy and mythology. Painting with pigments, I begin to understand their individual characteristics, it is these material properties that determine how the colour behaves; heavy, light, coarse, matt, transparent and iridescent.

'Colours are kinds of light, all earthy colours such as black, earth, leaden, brown have a relation to Saturn. Sapphire and airy colours and those which are always green belong to Mercury. Purple, darkish and golden mixed with silver belong to Jupiter. Fiery, flaming, bloody and iron colour to Mars. Golden, saffron and bright colours to the Sun, and white, curious, green and ruddy colours to Venus.'

- Cornelius Agrippa, 1533

And so, in the studio, elusive clouds of elemental colour form when tipped from their glass jars. I convert these powdered pigments into fluid paint via my own adaptations of traditional distemper and egg tempera techniques. The alchemic process of moving from powder towards fluidity provokes my thinking of both historic and contemporary practices; how colour is procured and processed and the mythology surrounding these colours within culture.

An aspect of my practice involves searching for naturally occurring pigments that I source and process myself from specific environments relating to where the paintings are made. The resulting paintings are installed in the landscape that the pigments originated, a cyclical process of returning a painting to its material origins. Using natural earth pigments in combination with chemically synthesised pigments I perceive a tension between visible and invisible forces. If earth pigments ground us then perhaps synthesised pigments make us think of the stars, they each have their own magic.”

- Emily Platzer

For further information and access to the online gallery please get in touch at info@ioneandmann.com