When bringing together various extracts of text to be used for the (my) Saachi online gallery profile I came across a review I had filed away. On rereading it I felt that Dr Sue Morgan's insightful words should have been included on my new website; but here, as a blog/post, they are at least given a place and space to be appreciated.
"If there is such a thing as the transcendental sublime, then it is clear from the work of Chrys Allen that there can also be savage layers of darkness intermeshed within it. The intricacy of her aesthetic engineering, coupled with a delicate violence of line, exquisite spatial composition and choice of palette, indicates that there is a sombre, as well as beautiful, edge to the work.
Whatever the intentional engine in Chrys' head may be, for others there is also a revelation, sometimes seeping out behind the redemptive beauty, of the shadow of infinite black, which may be out in the dust and brute matter of the earth, as well as in the neural tissue, the axis and point of origin of visual production.
The physicality of her work, interlaced with these factors, provokes an emotional response which could be described as the arctic sublime. But the grammar of language is in fact inadequate to describe her aesthetic - the best response is a natural one - to look, examine and be fascinated. And in still moments, you may catch a trace of eternity."
Dr Sue Morgan
