GERALD LAING

Selected Citations and Comments

Laing’s Loop (1965) and Indenty (1966) are full of Baroque shifts which run laterally and vertically through the application of acrylic lacquer, metalflake and chromium which adorn the flat forms. This flatness is their key characteristic: they are zig-zagging silhouettes, as thin as a ballet dancer frontally addressing an audience, like Laing’s self, risen as the sculpted dancer in his Adam (1986). The overlay of painted curvilinear patterns renders the implacable surface of aluminium (in Loop, for example) ambiguous and playful.

David Alan Mellor, 'Gerald Laing: Swift Passages and the Monumental Imagination', in, Gerald Laing: A Retrospective 1963–1993, exhibition catalogue, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1993, p.2