Summary
Untitled 2008 is painted in oil on canvas and depicts an orange, shallow, rectangular moulded box mounted to a wall. Suspended from the interior of the box at staggered intervals are five string bags containing oranges. Loose oranges are also stacked in the lower part of the box and a gravity-defying column of fruit creeps up the left hand edge. The corners of the box have shallow circular and triangular indentations, suggesting that it has been moulded out of plastic. Three silver knobs on its lower edge suggest that it has, or once had, an electronic function, like a screen.
This plastic box has featured in Ling’s paintings since 2001, originally forming a heap with other urban detritus and latterly, as here, as a framing device for arrangements of objects and materials. A children’s sandpit found by Ling on one of his many scavenging trips, the box appealed to the artist both for its textural qualities and formally ambiguous status. Whether constructing tableaux, such as this, to paint in the studio or finding patches of landscape outside, Ling does not actively seek out a subject as such but, rather, is drawn to the objects in front of him or his immediate surroundings… (read more)
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