Past - Happy Days curated by Dorian Gray
Happy Days curated by Dorian Gray
Dorian Gray is a series of curated shows across London that reflects the processes of contemporary methods of painting practice.
Following on from the successful show at the Vegas Gallery, Dorian Gray now presents 31 contemporary painters who are an eclectic mix of subject matter, materials and concepts explored within painting. New artists have been introduced such as the graffiti artists Key and Nomad, who explore the concept of graffiti art in different ways. The work of Nomad, a German artist based in Berlin, will be seen in a London gallery for the first time. He explores the dilemma of bringing graffiti paintings into a gallery space. His comic-like references, bold colours and stylized lettering bear a similar reference to that of Infinity Bunce who has also brought the elements of graffiti art into her own work. However, she uses household paint in carefully laden layers of gloss projecting a stylized image often of an urban scene. Graffiti artist Key has used painted sculptures of Sesame Street characters to transcend his notion of graffiti art into a gallery space. David Ben White creates his own humorous characters in an attempt to forge a dichotomy between the painting's initial humorous appearance and the subject matter's loaded references. This notion of seduction and displacement lies at the heart of the conception of each work. The self-consciously cartoon-like style of painting in the portrayal of the characters attempts to convey to the viewer a sense of lost innocence, heightened by the awkward appearance of the thick, gloopy impasto of the painting's surface quality. This is far removed from James Roper’s work – both with its spiraling abstract shapes and colours that explode off the picture surface.
Mike Newton, Nathan James, John Zoller, Monkey Box, John Stark, Josie McCoy, Andy Denzler, Edd Pearman and Dan Proops have all taken on board the representation of figurative painting. Some of the artists explore social context in their work such as Josie McCoy and Monkey Box – whereas Josie explores the representation of modern iconic personalities in TV such as in the sitcom 'The Royle Family', Monkey Box has portrayed political figures such as Hitler and Gandhi. These artists' processes are very different in style as Monkey Box consists of two painters Sardine and Toberloni who paint on different sides of the canvas – Toberloni paints on the right and Sardine paints on the left. Josie McCoy's figurative painting has a certain parallel to that of Dan Proops; both artists use a highly stylized form of photorealistic techniques and both artists have made the represented figure almost android – Josie through the application of colour and Dan Proops by covering the person represented in his paintings with pixelated squares. Andy Denzler pushes this concept even further whereby the whole figure is smudged with the movement of the application of paint itself. Simon Naish has taken its concept more in a literal sense and produced images of pods with babies breaking out, floating into space.
While Mike Newton represents a more down-to-earth representation and reflects urban teenagers huddled together plotting and planning their next move, Chris Acheson and Nathan James also have a contemporary use for these narratives with which to make their work. Chris's photorealist paintings appear acutely aware of this whilst never advocating or reinforcing the cultural mechanisms at work affecting the characters he represents on his canvases. There is a cold, dispassionate quality to the gaze; understanding and acceptance certainly, but definitely something short of advocacy. "There is a point in portraying surface vulgarity where tragedy and comedy are very close." Barbara Stanwyck has said. This statement echoes the work of Chris Acheson. Edd Pearman has his own way of exploring and representing the figure with his printed stylized images. We see in Pearman's series 'Too Late To Try', the grand British tradition of using the arts as a form of social commentary but with a contemporary and very personal twist. Utilizing information gleaned from conversations with male friends who work 9 to 5, Pearman has attempted to visualize the negative effects of the modern world upon the human spirit; a modern and fascinating variant on the theme of 'working for the man'. American painter John Zoller is also concerned with representing the common person going about their everyday activities and explores an idealized indoctrinated American vision sourced from educational colouring books that include American military soldiers, firemen and sailors who are covered in glitter and painted with a dandy use of colour that almost mocks to role they are meant to represent.
We then turn away from hyper-realism and the figurative narrative in the show to the use of an abstract process in painting. There are painters in this show who delve their way through exploring the use of modern materials that is evident in the work of Michael Craig-Martin, Katherine Lubar, Zebedee Jones, Nick Dawes, Juan Bolivar, Piers Secunda, John Philip Edstrand and Shane Bradford. Piers and Shane show their love of the formulating process in the organic life of paint itself. Shane's infamous books dripping with paint drawing a breath of their own route is not dissimilar to that of Piers Secunda. Both artists use the material of household paint to create a language in painting that has a process of its own. Piers creates thick layers of paint that topple over themselves while Shane's takes on the like of organic stalactites that hang off the bottom of his brightly coloured books. Swedish-based painter John Philip Edstrand's sculptural paintings have less of an organic feel, whereby he projects concrete abstract shapes off the picture surface that engage in a conceptual formation of a controlled shape which has been manipulated and controlled by the artist. Zebedee Jones' paintings are dense impasto surfaces that are monochromatic with a vivid sense of colour. He scores and scrapes with his unconventional tools to reveal a passage of line within his painted surface. Meanwhile Nick Dawes, Katherine Lubar and Juan Bolivar have created abstract paintings that have concerns about hard edges within a pictorial space. Juan Bolivar's language of painting lies heavily in the element of line and he arrests it with graphic images of abstracted characters. Nick Dawes concerns himself with the manipulation of gloss in conjunction with matt acrylic. He similarly contrasts the idea of control and order with the element of chance that arises from his drips that roll down from his appropriated road sign imagery breaking free to have a journey of their own similar to that of Shane Bradford. Katherine Lubar's main interest is in light and the emotional, psychological and visual effects of its patterns on man-made structures such as buildings and interiors. She abstracts/minimizes the light patterns she sources so as to concentrate on form rather than content and plays with ideas of flatness and depth with the use of perspective and colour. Michael Craig-Martin is also a fan of flattened bold elements of colour similar to Lubar. The environment he creates has an invigorating, jazzy feel due to his vibrant colours and objects that shift in scale. Big Pop-style images are boldly outlined on fruit-colored backgrounds. There is a certain emotional detachment to Craig-Martin's imagery, which is also present in the work of Nick Dawes, who draws upon the element of flatness in his paintings whereby areas of his road signs are surrounded by careful layers of manipulated paint that encompass the sharp edged gloss road signs.
John Stark and Gordon Cheung bring their own unique vision of painting to the show. Stark's somber paintings combine their imagery with a Romantic rhetoric of landscape. He underlines how the concerns and motifs of the 19th Century high culture continue to thrive in 21st Century popular culture and investigates the possibilities afforded by these subliminal continuities of Western civilization. Gordon Cheung paints collapsing buildings, graffiti-covered ruins and neon palm trees in overgrown phosphorescent pools that occupy his epic landscapes devoid of humans wrenched open with chasms and craters. Cheung's complex material combinations and images resonate with universal themes and archetypes of Paradise, Earth and the Underworld.
American painter Elizabeth Sibilia who based herself in New York until recently aims in her representation of landscape to create a platform that reflects how diverse perspectives can inspire dialectics such as closeness vs. alienation. By presenting fragments of de-contextualized machinery at multiple perspectives, she instigates a disorientating relationship between the viewer and what is being viewed.
'Within this show we observe that such unity within diversity enriches rather than hinders contemporary practise in painting.' – Infinity Bunce
Featured Artists
Michael Craig -Martin, Shane Bradford, Piers Secunda, G-Brecht, Andy Harper, Zebedee Jones, Andy Denzler, John Stark, Dan Proops, Juan Bolivar, Gordon Cheung, Nick Dawes, Infinity Bunce, Katherine Lubar, Edd Pearman, Josie McCoy, Chris Acheson, Elizabeth Sibilia, Mike Newton, James Roper, Nomad, The Monkey in the Box Company, Zavier Ellis, Key, Jason Atomic, Simon Naish, Nathan James, Sir Jim, David Ben White, John Philip Edstrand and John Zoller
Exhibition Images
