Tess Jaray takes Russian inspiration in Mapping the Unseeable at London's Piper Gallery

Exhibition: Tess Jaray – Mapping the Unseeable, The Piper Gallery, London, until November 9 2012

For Tess Jaray – a painter drawn to geometry, colour, repetition and the patterns of the world and her own mind – the objects, textiles and architecture of Gothic, Baroque and Islamic churches provided initial inspiration.

In recent years, she’s concentrated more on underlying, unseen movements, combining wild colours in works particularly informed by Kazmir Malevich, a pioneer of abstract geometric art during the late 19th and early 20th century.

“I saw this painting in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg,” she says, of Red Square. “I was riveted. It dominated a room full of quite different paintings – Repin, turn of the century Russians, some landscapes of endless trees and mud.

“But Red Square seemed to fill the entire space, even though it was quite small.”

Malevich’s determination to keep things simple also sparked Jaray’s endeavours in minimalism, using computers more prevalently in pursuit of finer precision, with backgrounds and foregrounds becoming separate from one another – the latter screen-printed with a single colour, then layer-cut and added to the background panel.

They hint at landscapes and have three-dimensional elements to them. Ultimately, though, Jaray adds a level of detail which is intended to be seen first-hand.

• Open Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm. Admission free. The Piper Gallery, Newman Street, London. Follow the gallery on Twitter @thepipergallery.

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