There is a moment before and after a video plays that the screen becomes a void - a frame filled with blue that signifies a period outside of normal transmission.

It is the afterglow of this screen coulour that has triggered the paintings in Noel Ivanoff's new series of paintings - "Split Infinitive".

Working within a restricted palette that references the vacant space of the blue video screen, Ivanoff invites the viewer to contemplate the structure, the surfaces and the dominant colour of his works. The longer they are contemplated, the more the colour seems to shift and shimmer.

Each work comprises a painted panel worked in oil paint that has been stiffened with beeswax, and a companion mono print on dacron that is taken from the final layer of paint before it dries.

Ivanoff says the duality that plays between the panel and its companion piece sets up a series of visual questions.

"Initially, the panel looks like the solid, positive part of the work. But the dacron tracing, because of the way it absorbs the paint, appears to betray more evidence of the brush strokes. The positive/negative relationship between the two elements of each work resists definition - in the same way that the blue video screen appears empty of content, but can be perceived as a rich, layered block of colour."

"The semi-transparent quality of the tracing and the solidarity of the panel, as well as the repetition of the 'video blue' conspire to unsettle notions of visual memory and perception of colour."

"Split Infinitive" is dominated by two monumental works. In his previous show ("Tracing Colour"), Ivanoff used drafting film to create traced images. The decision to instead work with dacron has provided much greater flexibility in terms of size and scale. This has freed Ivanoff to make paintings that almost engulf the viewer's range of vision, while other smaller works in the show serve as their echoes and seem to return us, in their intimacy, to the format of the Television screen.

Jay Louisson (2001)