David Batchelor Concretos [Paperback]

Throughout his international career spanning more than thirty years, artist and writer David Batchelor has long been preoccupied with color. Colour is not just a feature of [my] sculpture or painting, he notes, but its central and overriding subject. This new publication is devoted to an ongoing series of sculptures titled Concretos. First made in 2011, Concretos combine concrete with a variety of brightly colored  and often found  materials.The publication features a text by Batchelor charting the origins and development of Concretos. He reveals that the first Concreto was made after encountering colored glass shards embedded in a concrete wall in the back streets of Palermo. Over time these Concretos, their title a nod to the Latin American art movement to which Batchelors work is much indebted, have become more complex adventures in layering, pattern, and process. Elements such as acrylic plastic, spray and household gloss paint, steel, fabric, and found objects all find themselves set in a concrete base. The most recent works, titled Extra-Concretos (2019) retain much of the simplicity of the early pieces while working on a much larger scale.In an essay commissioned for the publication, curator Eleanor Nairne considers Concretos in light of their material possibilities. Nairnes vivid text draws connections between the sculptures and a wide range of art historical and literary references. Some of the playful and sensual characteristics of Batchelors artistic vocabulary are considered in relation to floral bouquets, sewing-machines, ice cream, and poetry.Architectural historian Adrian Fortys essay discusses concretes physical qualities and relationship with modernity. He notes that the imperfect nature and apparent neutrality of the material is key to its enduring place within architecture, design, and in Batchelors case, contemporary sculpture. In the Concretos, asserts Forty, concrete plays a necessary part in allowing colour to be itself. Presenlc-