Coleman Project Space is pleased to present SUPERFICE, a three-person exhibition conceived and curated by Rebecca Geldard under her editorial moniker appleandhat.com.The focus is on abstract painting and its acknowledgement of the surface – works that assert the idea of illusory space or pictorial entry points but essentially keep the attention hovering in a shallow depth of field. Through the use of seductive, sometimes elaborate material strategies obfuscation might be read as a form of painterly resistance.

In all three practices one might encounter an associative swing-door moment between an assertion of aesthetic control and referential territories beyond the compositional map. For Swiss artist Daniel Karrer – the first showing of his work in the UK – the screen is a direct pictorial and psychological reference point within his visceral, if carefully managed, play with paint. Christopher Hanlon’s forensic fabrications, on the other hand, recall the different material flavours of image-making technologies. The interplanar sensibility of Selma Parlour’s architectural configurations, meanwhile, suggests a testing ground of sorts for the potential production of improbable objects, sets, and digital experimentation.

Also in play is the notion of representation on a sliding scale. Even the most reductive of painterly sensibilities chimes with some sense of what we know about reality observed. By contrast, the perfect rendering of the abstract, as encountered in the everyday, can appear faithful to its design principles even if created as a figurative ruse. While in each mode of making evidenced here there are many art-historical traces and moments of homage, this group of ‘baton carriers’ re-introduce us to the familiar on their own exacting terms.

Christopher Hanlon (b.1978, England) lives and works in Belfast. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008 and in the same year was selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries. His work has been shown in numerous European galleries and art fairs, including in Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, as well as in the USA. In 2016, he was included in the John Moores Painting Prize exhibition at the Walker Museum in Liverpool. Hanlon is a lecturer, BA Fine Art (Painting), at The School of Art and Design, University of Ulster, Belfast. He is represented by London gallery Domobaal.

Daniel Karrer (b. 1983, Basel, Switzerland) lives and works in Basel where he is represented by Tony Wuethrich Galerie. Karrer graduated in 2010 with an MA in Fine Arts, from the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Basel. In 2015, he was awarded a Cahier d’Artist by Pro Helvetia and, in 2016, a residency at the Atelier Mondial in Berlin D, by the Christoph Merian Stiftung. In 2017, he was nominated for the Strabag Art Award. Karrer has exhibited widely in Switzerland and in Europe, recent solo exhibitions include: Untitled, Dienstraum, Kunstmuseum Olten, 2019; Shrubbery, Kunsthalle Arbon, 2019; Hands Dripping Red with Sunset, Herrmann Germann Contemporary, Zurich, 2017.

Selma Parlour (b. Johannesburg, S.A. 1976), PhD in Art, Goldsmiths College (2008-14) is based in London. Awards include an Arts Council England Creative Development Award (2020), the 'Mark Rothko Memorial Trust Artist-in-Residence Award' (2018), the 'Sunny Dupree Family Award for a Woman Artist', the Summer Exhibition, the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017), and the John Moores Painting Prize (2016, prizewinner). Exhibitions include: 'Activities for the Abyss', Pi Artworks, London (2019, solo); 'Upright Animal', curated by Sacha Craddock, Pi Artworks, London (2018, solo); 'Parlour Games', Marcelle Joseph Projects, the House of St Barnabas, London (2016, site-specific solo); and New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2011).

Rebecca Geldard is a writer, editor and curator based in Powys, Wales. Her writing has appeared regularly in publications such as Art Review, Guardian online, MAP, Modern Painters, Time Out, and Kaleidoscope. A member of AICA, Geldard’s recent essays include: observations on two works by Swiss-Italian artist Vittorio Santoro for his mid-career monograph IMPLIES MOVEMENT, Hatje Kantz, 2021; 'Exquisite Weirdness' on the painting of Richard Wathen for New Eyes Every Time, Distanz, 2021 and; 'One Hundred Ways' on Russell Herron's portrait practice, 2021. She is the creator and editor of appleandhat.com, an arts and humanities portal.