Simon Stone

A Symmetry of Parts  

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape.  

Derek Walcott Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, 1992  

Richly arrayed surfaces that are populated by various – often numerous – discrete elements, often seeming to stand apart from each other but always linked compositionally: as if these seemingly disconnected pictorial moments are musical notes and, on the canvas or board, harmonise into exquisite chords. Much of Simon Stone’s current work takes the form of separate component images in dialogue with each other across the picture plane. These enigmatic juxtapositions can be something of a delightful puzzle to the viewer who tries to find connections and so to “join the dots”.    

Take the monumental triptych The Park (2024), for example. Set in a somewhat worn-down rustic landscape, we see a man wearing a suit decorated with lines that look like a map or diagram. In the place of his head there is a square painting  in which an antelope looks backwards. Then there is another picture-in-the-picture showing two road-tunnels and a bridge, possibly in Johannesburg. Below this, and dominating the work as a whole, is a man sleeping outdoors on the ground wrapped in a blanket (or is his body transforming into a thick trunk of a felled tree?). Where his legs should be there is the semblance of a white figure – possibly a grave-marker or maybe a classical sculpture. Below him an extinguished candle seems to be giving up the ghost. And then, within the rest of the work, we see a man silhouetted in newspaper cuttings (a municipal-type building façade prominent and the headline “Exile returns” on the pages); an irregular hexagon showing a lush garden scene – from Kirstenbosch, in fact); a small fey-like creature in orange, brandishing a red flower that might as well be a jousting shield.  Then at the extreme right of the picture there is a shadowy outline of a female figure (is she staring to the right, past what we can see or is she looking at us?) I think she is disappearing like a spectre, but she might just as well be arriving and will soon take on solid form.  

The above is a breathless, sweeping (and, inevitably, imperfect) exercise in description. I’ve indulged in this because when I was chatting to the artist about this exhibition he advised me, with a twinkle in his eye, that when a painting is not easily giving up its secrets, sometimes just describing what you see can be of help. Now that I’ve done it, I wonder if it helps me, or you the viewer, because textual probably doesn’t really “unlock” the painting. But the wonderful thing is that words are isolated units, and taken together, they work to convey meaning. In this way the act of describing mirrors the act of looking at a work by Simon Stone. The elements, taken on their own, are like phrases that stand apart but the words that connect the phrases, so much less interesting on their own, are what really matter. It is easy to say that Stone’s works are “puzzles”; but a puzzle can be solved and I’m not sure if these paintings really want that kind of inescapability. I think they want to be endlessly indecipherable. And that is the essence of their power to draw one into them.  

 Simon Stone’s work demands time. Time from the viewer, because these are not paintings that can usefully be taken in and processed in the seconds (or nanoseconds) we have become accustomed to give over to images in our million-pictures-a-day world of social and digital media. They demand time from the maker, too.   

On the screens of our phones, we flip through a multitude of images, mostly unconnected to each other, as a several-times-daily activity. Much has been made – pseudo-scientifically in my opinion – about how our brains have been “rewired” by our exposure to social media and the like. Rather, I think we have developed strategies and skills to process incoming information differently. Our brains, endlessly seeking meaning from the things we see, create linkages and connections, whether logical or absurd. The point is that we seek meaning in a world where so much seems unconnected, confusing or random. With his labour-intensive, richly layered and concentrated works Simon Stone, I would argue, challenges our new-found tendency to scroll down or flip right when confronted with contrasting picture elements. By placing them together, unified by the unique intentionality of the artist, we are stopped in our tracks and our imagination is delightfully challenged. The puzzle is not the picture; rather we become the puzzle that the picture evokes.   

Simon Stone produces “open” works. He is not dictating that there is one indisputable “meaning” to be found. I believe these are not enigmas that can be solved. Rather I would offer that his work is an array of endless possibilities that are best approached like a haiku and not a crossword. Any linkages we discern are from our subconscious and deeply personal, just as they must undoubtedly be for the artist who makes them. I think we have become too accustomed to find “narrative” in much of contemporary art. Stone is offering us a respite from fixity and inviting us to indulge in glorious, gorgeous, possibility.   

These paintings are not about parts: they are about symmetries. If the viewer sees fragments in this exhibition, I suggest they stand back, pause, and look for a while. I think then they may see that each work is a whole in itself and each of these wholes, taken together in “Mid Stream”, is just part of the endless flow of imaginaries. Something like the process in our head when we stroll, hike, people-watch or dream. I think Simon Stone is a truly generous artist: he has invited us to look into a mirror of his creation and to see that, in actuality,  we are reflected in each work he has made. We are the exact reflection of what stands before. We are the glue that binds the pieces together. If we allow it, we discover ourselves here, in our thoughts and desires and hopes and dreams.