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At John Meade's latest show, two large identical canvas images of a gridded architectural space greet the visitor. Black and white and hung vertically opposite one another, these tight geometries of dark reflective windows and criss-crossed girders seem incarceratory and futuristic. Directly in front, an oversized knucklebone shape emerges from the wall. In the larger space there is a cluster of similarly large stone-like polyurethane objects, smoothly sculpted but with a rough, sandy surface. Each one of these carved 'holds' is unique and suspended above eye level. Bathed in a gentle pink light, they both 'warm up' typical Minimalist austerities and offer a kind of camp continuity with some of Meade's previous work-such as the covering, in pink wool, of a child's car ride in 1994. The grid image is repeated as a slide projection on the floor.
Just as we experience difficulty placing ourselves into the illusional frame of the grid - a sense of vertigo or loss of mastery in the face of its self-sufficiency - this entire arrangement questions the role of critical analysis and writing. Unlike art that tells a story, moral or joke, or that playfully deconstructs its status, intention or structures, here the viewer would seem to have nothing to unlock. Meade's work defeats the clichéd trope of 'at first it seems to be x, but in fact it is y'. There is no single vantage position, no privileged perspective for the critic to adopt in uncovering its meaning. Neither ironic nor entertaining, we are instead faced with an almost baffling aloofness, an illegible beauty, and are compelled to perform a movement, or, what Roland Barthes called, an erotics of reading. And it is