James Nares' paintings are much more and much less straightforward than they first appear.  They can seem technically mysterious ("how did he do that?"), but on reflection, they're as plain as the nose on your face.  Likewise, the generic familiarity of the brushstrokes gives way to an animated weirdness that turns one's thoughts far from issues of process.

The shadow of the calligraphy which trailed the earlier paintings has been left behind for a more linear and sequential structure.  A complex choreography connects the beginning and ending of the marks as they slither across their rectangular fields.  Each episode inhabits a canvas whose proportions echo the event within - they co-exist and converge in large aggregates which feel more like convocations than words or sentences.  Nares is elaborating a model of reductive abstraction yet his limited language connects clearly to interior reality.  The paintings don't refer to anything, but the gap opens the way for a full cargo of non-verbal content.

Their complete specificity may be their subject.  The vibe is more Hindu than Buddhist, a fusion of the meditative and the Darwinian.  The paint becomes a sort of ur-material, an imaginary substance torn from an endless substrate.  The huge brushstrokes are like genies turned loose by their master; predatory, searching, caught in some psychic updraft, unable to settle into concrete form.

The sense of an inner life to the material makes the work an analogy for awareness.  The temporal aspect of the image is right up front: one navigates the flow of thought while the flow of paint is there to ponder.  The paintings have no ax to grind, just a dignified obviousness as they mess with the nuts and bolts of their own creation.  It would be unlikely that such clear, pure things could feel so libidinous, or that such a blunt, physical presence would convey this ethereal light.  But here they are, collapsing boundaries and colonizing for painting a bit more of the territory of our experience.  The extent to which they neutralize dichotomies is disarming; their modesty holds the spotlight, and their elegance feels like wisdom.