Alex Virji
dal 9/9/2010 al 16/10/2010
Segnalato da
9/9/2010
Alex Virji
Gallery Primo Alonso, London
The exhibition show how Virji sees painting as a form of archaeology. His discoveries are subtly juxtaposed and married together. This current series uses floral motifs as the constant within the work forming the bones of his paintings that are then 'rediscovered' through rigorous glazing and erasure.
Gallery Primo Alonso is pleased to present Alex Virji's inaugural solo show Variations on a Theme. Virji sees painting as a form of archaeology, unearthing and exhuming different painting conventions. His discoveries are subtly juxtaposed and married together. This current series uses floral motifs as the constant within the work forming the bones of his paintings that are then "rediscovered" through rigorous glazing and erasure.
Through an appreciation of repetitive floral pattern as well as the more austere still life imagery, the impersonal nature of the imagery allows the paintings to become vessels for more oblique narrative strands. The motif of the flower is so far removed from the original, that it becomes a ghost, a memory that has become abstracted through its incessant re-telling. The flowers are "sampled" from a myriad of sources and the mediated imagery that the motifs are born from is physically cut up and re-worked on the studio wall. This regeneration of source material means that forms are repeated on a loop and are remixed and re-imagined.
The paintings can be seen as a kind of rubbish dump for the overtly twee patternation that pervades one's memory. Occasionally the painterly surface references the faded wall of an imaginary interior space, onto which the sublime landscape and hyper-normal wallpaper patternation converge to create an ephemeral and contradictory world. Interstitial spaces and voids occur within these worlds and open up a sort of "no-man's land" of pictorial space. Due to the physicality of the heavily grained linen, they take on a very tangible presence and definite sense of surface: a kind of additive subtraction.
The title Variations on a Theme alludes to a predominantly musical idea of having a central structure or chord progression that is used as a tonal framework for composition and improvisation. Like the Indian "Raga", a meditative and almost hypnotic quality comes from this recycling of one central idea. The familiar pattern sometimes gets lost within swirling, syncopated rhythms, but is then unearthed and picked out to restore harmony.
Press Office:
Angelica Sule a.sule@primoalonso.com
Private View Friday 10th September 2010 6-9pm
In conversation with Alex Virji Thursday 7th October 2010 7-8pm
Gallery Primo Alonso
395-397 Hackney Road, London (UK)
Hours: Friday-Sunday 11am - 6pm or by appointment