Untitled

Daniel Sinsel's ‘Untitled’, 2012 is the most recent work in a long-term series of trompe l'oeil oil paintings which depict floating and meandering ribbons. Here, the broad grey material which loops and ripples in front of a sulphurous yellow ground, strikes a new note of ambiguity. Whereas previous paintings have portrayed ribbons furling weightlessly - sometimes against lattice work backdrops or intertwined with objects suspended in mid-air - this image suggests a denser material, a coiled belt that is simultaneously resisting and succumbing to gravity. The grey material appears, at points, to loop and ripple with Baroque dynamism and complexity, while elsewhere it slumps heavily back on itself. All the while, the monochrome yellow resists any perception of spatial depth. Indeed, the lack of depth and material surface of the picture are subjects which Sinsel regularly addresses: he veers in his use of materials between opacity and transparency, puncturing the surfaces of his works, or (in his paintings) depicting illusionistic perforations redolent of Lucio Fontana's slashed canvases.