In Batchelor's own words, "Our cities are saturated with glowing, flashing, colored light and innumerable bright, shiny, or fluorescent surfaces. This for me is where color begins.... in the swatch books for commercial paints, lightening gels and neon and Plexiglas." Batchelor incorporates raw industrial color into simple, abstract compositions that highlight its naturally found state. In The Spectrum of Hackney Road I, old warehouse dollies become frames for low-rider light. Called by the artist himself "dirty readymades for shiny monochromes", the work abstracts and condenses contemporary urban environments. (CS)

(Born in Dundee, Scotland, 1955, and lives in London, U.K.)

The Spectrum of Hackney Road I

2003
found objects, fluorescent light, and cable
dimension variable
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Harold M. Esty, Jr. Fund, 2004
©David Batchelor