Detour 2012

Sven Lukin’s ‘Detour’ is, well, some kind of detour! I can imagine him building the surface up from wood, adding colour, dimension, and an almost topographic sense of form that has both a playful and a slightly unsettling vibe. I'm thinking about his process: he’s building and painting; adding angles and then stripes and polka dots. He’s got pinks, yellows, greens, and blacks… it’s a party. I like how he uses the circle to contain all the action, but the edges have broken apart and all hell is breaking loose. What I love about painting is that all these forms come together to give the eye a reason to travel around the artwork, a kind of seeing-machine. Painters are always looking at other painters, and I feel like Lukin is looking at pop art from the time, but also maybe gesturing towards Frank Stella’s constructed paintings. He takes that idea, smashes it up, and comes up with something that feels a little raw, a little quirky, and totally his own.