Wall Painting (The Medium Dynamic Rose).

Acrylic on/off aluminium
Dimensions: 50.7cm X 34cm X 4cm
Charlie Warde, 2019

This “Wall Painting” is one of a series of 6 paintings that focus on one of the grade 2 listed walls surrounding Trellick Tower that are due to be demolished. The hyper-real 3D acrylic paintings of damaged and neglected sections of the wall contrast with the immaculately painted panels, each of which conform to the dimensions of A paper sizes – A1 – A6. The panels’ colours represent the fresh optimism of the time – they are taken directly from Le Corbusier’s 63 Polychromie Architecturale. The textures, diminishing dimensions and carefully chosen colours are designed to create a group of paintings that, when shown together, play with the architectural tropes of surface, scale and proportion. 

From a painterly perspective, the paintings explore the potential to push past the limitations of two dimensional painting with conventional painting materials. The are made using only acrylic paint and artists pigments to create three-dimensional slabs of paint, which are attached to, or hung alongside their supports. 

These “Wall Paintings” straddle the disciplines of painting and sculpture. Their profound faithfulness to the subject matter, born from deep research of the building’s materials and processes make for uncanny hyper-realism presented in formal, abstract terms.