Andrew Grassie @ Talbot Rice Gallery

Walking into Andrew Grassie’s first Scottish solo show feels a little like jumping head first into a masterclass for procrastinating postmodernist brainstormers. Described as elliptical orbits, the disorientating shunt of the collection of photo-realist egg tempera miniatures is startling. A collection of paintings from the past ten years charts Grassie’s process of finding and very much sticking to a concept. Appropriating the high school bullies of the art world, Grassie has pushed and pulled canonical works around his tiny, mythical gallery compositions in contemporary art’s answer to Championship Manager.

The size of photographs, the meticulous works depict and appropriate familiar pieces, playfully rearranging existing displays, introducing alien works to tangible gallery spaces around the world in order to re-juggle the hierarchy and chronological exhibition of art. Concerns with artistic process, both literal and conceptual, both of Grassie’s and of the discipline at large, are laid bare in pieces which document the mixing of paint and the layering of paintings within paintings within paintings. The culmination of Grassie’s multi-layered collection in Painting As Document comes in the form of a new work commissioned for Talbot Rice. The piece captures the installation itself – a self-referential moment which traps you inside its tiny frame. Painting As Document makes for a weighty visit. With their multiple theoretical implosions, Grassie’s microscopic masterpieces more than hold their own amidst the Art Festival's programme.