Ivo Selden

Practice and approach

Ivo Selden works with repeated colour boundaries: nested bands, turning corners and the suggestion of a fold. His images often seem immediately clear from a distance, then become less settled as the viewer follows a particular edge. A shape that appeared flat can begin to suggest depth; a bright passage can make the neighbouring ground look darker without changing its colour. Selden treats these shifts as the substance of a painting rather than an effect added after composition.

His studies begin with a small number of intervals. He draws a curve, places another at a measured distance and then deliberately breaks that distance at one point. The change may be slight, but it alters the rhythm of the whole arrangement. Working notes record which boundaries were taped, which were painted freely and which were revised after the surrounding colour had dried. Selden does not use these notes to establish a hierarchy of tidy and untidy work. They help him understand why a particular edge feels abrupt, elastic or uncertain when the same image is seen at a different size.

Afterlight Hours explores the apparently straightforward structure of nested bands. Colour Holds, a later programme entry, moves toward folded-looking surfaces and areas of reflected light. The two exhibitions share a concern with intervals, but give the viewer different kinds of orientation. One offers repeated routes to follow. The other lets a route disappear into a dark area before returning somewhere less expected, leaving the eye to make its own connection.

Selden's practice is well suited to a patient comparison between two views. He may ask what happens when a painting is approached from the side, or when a small study is placed beside a larger version. He is wary of assigning a fixed mood to a colour before the surrounding relationships have been considered. At Ternform, that attitude becomes an invitation to look again rather than a promise of optical spectacle. A useful exercise is to choose a narrow band, follow its whole length and describe where it seems to gain or lose weight without resorting to the name of its colour.