CHRIS PACKER

Catalogue Dither 10 – 19 August 2017 Thursday-Saturday, 2-6pm Opening - Thursday 10 August, 6-8pm Artist in Gallery - Sunday 13 August, 10am - 1pm In drawing, dithering refers to the creation of multiple marks such that the eye ceases to perceive the distinctions between them. In life, it refers to the establishment of multiple outcomes, such that a person ceases to perceive a single course of action. There is something fascinating in the way one thing diffuses itself into another. Using a pencil or brush to blend colours and achieve the illusion of three-dimensional form can be terrifically satisfying. Using three-dimensional forms to create an illusion of tonal gradation, and light itself as the medium, these works reverse that. In formal terms, dithering disrupts the pretensions of line and shape to any kind of purity. In life we are in thrall to corresponding pretensions, of clear delineations and pure purposes. We worship decisiveness, and live in perpetual fear of dithering, as if the liminal isn’t ubiquitous – as if life isn’t a dithering between birth and death. There is a question hanging over these works. Originally they were to be painted and the strips removed, to hang separately in the gallery space. But if the painted marks I was set to make might represent the ones you see here, what would that mean about these real but fleeting shadows? I dithered, leaving the unmade paintings to tremble in the imagination; the imagined dithering into represented and the real into representation. chrispacker.com