Covergence 2010

Charles Gibbons made this 46 by 46 cm painting, Convergence, using acrylic on canvas. It presents an abstract landscape, perhaps, or an expressive mapping of some social space. The title implies a coming together, but of what exactly? Consider the moment in which it was made: we might think about the turn of the twenty-first century, with its digital technologies and globalizing forces, and how these shape our perceptions of space and identity. The layered lines of the painting suggest flows of information or people, while the bright colors hint at the dynamism and fragmentation of contemporary experience. What institutions frame Gibbons’s work? The gallery system and the art market play a role, as do art schools and the critical discourses they generate. Through careful analysis, cultural historians piece together the networks of meaning and power that give works of art like this their significance. The meanings of art are always contingent on the social and institutional contexts in which it is produced and received.