Ann Kopka: Moving On Up Down Escalators

A solo exhibition of more than twenty vibrant acrylic paintings informed by Ann Kopka’s fascination with the interaction of geometry, design and architecture in the urban environment.

Ann Kopka’s paintings in essence lean towards abstraction although deliberately hover between the representation of recognisable images and the non-traditional formal repetition of shapes and structures prevalent in abstract art. There is a visual emphasis on exploring the relationships between structure and scale, colour and light, repetition and pattern. And the processes of deconstructing and reconstructing subject matter to articulate concepts of space produces images, which taken out of their original context, verge towards a perception of abstraction.

Translating altered digital images on to large canvases requires precise measurements and calculations, and is an intensive and time consuming operation. The paintings ‘grow’ through the subtle application of multiple layers of vivid acrylic colour. Colour is employed not to be representational but to convey energy, emphasise the circulation of movement and bind the network of structures together into a coherent picture. The slow development of vibrant saturated surfaces results in paintings that have an illusion of depth sometimes with distinctive three dimensional qualities contradicting the defining flatness of abstract art and yet in art historical terms allude to analytical cubism, constructivism, op-art and geometric abstraction.

Ann Kopka studied Fine Art at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and the City Lit. She has studied The Practices and Debates of Modern Art and graduated with a First Class Honours degree from The Open University. She has also studied Museum Curating at Tate Modern. Ann has exhibited in London, the UK and USA. Her work is held in private collections in France, Spain, UK, Australia and Australia.