Orange, Black Painting with Blue Edge, and Burgundy 2011

Robert Irwin made ‘Orange, Black Painting with Blue Edge, and Burgundy’ with paint, but in a way that asks, what is a painting? This is because the surfaces are so smooth, so sleek, so reflective, that they seem almost like industrial objects rather than something made by hand. In each panel there’s a subtle shift in tone. Look at the central panel, how the black seems to float on the white either side, and the way the colours reflect the light in the room. Irwin is playing with perception, so that the painting isn’t just something you look at, but something that interacts with the space around it. It feels like a really contemporary take on the sublime, something like Barnett Newman’s big colour fields, but with an added dose of Californian cool. You could get lost in those surfaces, just like you can get lost in a good conversation.