DOTS Painting

In 2001, Neil Wood began an ambitious new cycle of picture making, writing and installation he labelled ROADWORKS. One day in Paris, assailed by the toxic fumes but struck by the pernicious black beauty of a new stretch of tarmac freshly laid outside his front door, Wood was intrigued by the flat, invasive quality of the material. He relates his thoughts: ‘The process of tarmac laying is like urban carpeting to me. I remember the stories of Paris covering its cobble stones with black tarmac in order to prevent offering more ammunition for 1968-style demonstrations and I also remembered the line that went “sous les pavés, la plage”, which seemed a like a beautiful, utopian ideal - but was expressed with a somewhat resigned irony. And yet today, the stuff has become so normal under our wheels and feet that we no longer question its presence. Like many other substances or objects, tarmac has steadily become de-politicised and merely consumed, while at the same time it retains its trailblazing role in urbanisation. In other words; if you build the road, you connect people - but you also cut down the rainforest in the process.’ ‘In symbolic terms, tarmac is the very substance which both reminds us that we are stuck to the earth by gravity and yet it marks a layer of separation. Tarmac insidiously links us to our oil addiction with its water-repellent quality and its deep blackness and has a way of symbolizing so called industrial progress - by literally covering over nature. We tend to accept it without question. In fact, we don’t see it anymore.’ ‘Another way of expressing the reality of tarmac would be to say that it is the urban stage on which our lives play-out on a daily basis. So it also symbolizes the all-important mobility factor, with all that that implies’. ‘Obviously, I think of Beuys and the way he established his own mythology. The Tartar legend, the felt, the wax, the multiples, the symbols, all adding up to the language we know. The fetishistic attachment to materials is definitely an inspiration to me, as is the Robert Rauschenberg doctrine of walking round the block looking for stuff...’ Neil Wood has kept not just a keen eye on the road itself but equally on the graphic design; the way signs are laid out, printed or simply stuck down onto tarmac surfaces by road workers and it’s these observations which have steadily nourished his own mark-making. By establishing a radically monochrome palette; solid white cut-out shapes, white spray, chalk marks and a white speckled half-tone created by the texture of gravel stones set inside the tarmac mixture itself, Wood has learnt the language and built the stage onto which his subjects are literally, set.

Painting:Airbrush on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:43.3 W x 47.2 H x 2 D in

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