There is a distinction between the moment an artist starts and the moment they finish an artwork.

In the first place, the artist typically chooses the materials and then, following a series of decisions, they use those materials to create an artwork – for instance a painting or a sculpture.

But what if an artist refuses to make those decisions while still wanting to make an artwork? In the work of Kimball Gunnar Holth, those decisions are left unmade, and we see a search for an image that never fully takes shape.

A half-assembled bed, blankets and sheets packed in plastic bags without a mattress in sight suggest a false start, or an abandoned attempt to reach some sort of order. He paints the silhouette of a horse (or a pony?) again and again, yet its face is an indistinguishable collection of random-looking marks.

These works ask the question of what is and isn’t important, which is similar to that of what is and isn’t art. When an artist does something, there is also an option to do nothing – to wait and to see what is already happening on the canvas, and to be open to a different outcome than the one you had in mind.

Gallery