MATTHEW COUPER: 1, 10

One hundred and ten years ago, the groundbreaking group exhibition Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10 (pronounced "zero-ten") was opened in Saint Petersburg, Russia (then Petrograd).

This historic exhibition introduced Kazimir Malevich's first non-objective paintings, which he named Suprematism. The enigmatic title, "0,10," symbolized a dual concept: “Zero” marked a beginning—a fresh starting point in painting—while “Ten” referenced the number of artists initially scheduled to participate (though, in the end, fourteen artists exhibited).

Of the 155 artworks displayed, one installation photograph looms large, capturing the now-iconic corner installation of Malevich’s still-wet Suprematist paintings. Notably, his Black Square was hung in the "sacred" upper corner, traditionally reserved for the Russian ikon of Christ Pantocrator.

The work of Malevich has been an important touchstone to Couper, first seeing Malevich’s paintings in person in 1998 at City Gallery Wellington (Aotearoa/New Zealand). One of the works on loan from Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum included Eight Red Rectangles (1915)—a painting Couper had studied in art history books and noted at the time, “... There were layers of overpainting, corrections, pencil lines, and thick, cracked oil paint.The paint was really worked.  Its small, intimate scale shocked me, as I had mostly associated non-objective painting with clean, large, and precise works. This piece, for all its ‘hard-edge-ness’, was gestural, intense, aged and grubby, yet its composition held a galaxy within…”

"...I’ve referenced Eight Red Rectangles in my own work many times. In 2005, I reinterpreted it as text and exclamations, then in 2009, as a series of nailed wooden forms. I revisited the concept again in 2015 to mark the centenary of Suprematism. The painting turns up in many of my Spanish Colonial, Baroque-type paintings.  When I began exploring isolated island forms in 2019, the memory of that painting reignited my creativity and inspired new works…”

In 2015, during a major Malevich retrospective at the Tate Gallery and the centenary of Suprematism, Couper began reconfiguring Malevich’s Suprematist paintings as three-dimensional, volumetric paintings. Inspired by Malevich’s reinterpretation of the ikon, Couper constructed compositions from blue, wood-grained lumber—cut, broken, punctured, and joined with large-headed nails.The series as titled ‘100 Rings’—referencing the centennial age of the paintings as the growth rings of a tree, ready to be figuratively milled to create his paintings. Aleksandra Shatskikh’s book Black Square (2012) particularly influenced him; her description of Malevich’s proto-Suprematist works as "hunks of wood" resonated deeply. For Couper, the solid wood forms became a symbolic reference to the crucifixion, reflecting his Spanish-colonial Baroque influences.

In 2022, Couper acquired a rare copy of Andrei Nakov’s first French catalogue raisonné on Malevich. Using its black-and-white photographs as a guide, he began recreating all 687 paintings, sketches, prints, and sculptures from Malevich’s Suprematist period with the pared-back forms of woodgrain, lumber and nails. To date, Couper has completed over 70 works. The first group of paintings were exhibited at Thermostat Gallery in Palmerston North (Aotearoa/New Zealand) in March 2024.

Couper’s ongoing Suprematist recreations are primarily small oil paintings on panel or canvas, occasionally accented with gold leaf to double-back on Malevich’s ikon ideological references. These works are often  the gateway to more complex pieces in Couper’s oeuvre such as his  Isolation Paintings, of which a group of large canvases were exhibited at MAGMA Galleries in 2023.

1,10 pays homage to the birth of Suprematist painting and its lingering spectre on the pursuit of painting in the 21st century. 

JK Russ is an artist, curator, writer and educator based in the USA. Together with Matthew Couper, she co-curates exhibitions at CouperRuss, an independent art space in Las Vegas, Nevada.