Martin Maloney
dal 14/4/2008 al 16/5/2008
Segnalato da
14/4/2008
Martin Maloney
Timothy Taylor Gallery, London
Actress Slash Model. Taking as a starting point the banal, semi-nude female models that appear daily in British tabloid newspapers, the artist reconstructs their playful poses in large-scale collages and works on paper.
Timothy Taylor Gallery is delighted to present a series of new works by Martin Maloney.
Taking as a starting point the banal, semi-nude female models that appear daily in British
tabloid newspapers, Maloney reconstructs their playful poses in large-scale collages and
works on paper to be shown in both the Carlos Place and Dering Street galleries.
Bold, amusing and varied, these collages are a continuation of a body of work that mixes
high-art reference with pop-cultural influences. Maloney uses an intuitive and seemingly
Expressionist style to examine the classic art historical genre of the female nude. The
buxom bodies of young, fleshy ingénues are collaged in blocks of colour taken from
previously painted and discarded canvases. Figurative and strikingly graphic, these
works are infiltrated with the complexity of abstraction. Recycling and reforming his own
work, Maloney takes something old to make something new.
Maloney works in a free way without preliminary studies or any idea of the look of the
final piece. Complimentary and contradictory colour, texture and pattern are juxtaposed
on the canvas creating a complex and varied surface. Flat expanses of paint and wild,
intricate patterns lie against daring leaps of colour and vigorous brushwork and are held
together on the raw canvas background with the trace of a charcoal outline. Although
absorbed by art history, the works are immediately accessible and allow the viewer to
create their own narrative; Ruby Green is a flame-haired, strong woman who stares
directly at the viewer with piercing blue eyes; Kali leans suggestively away and smiles;
Kitten strikes an archetypal glamour pose, while Lolita, with her raven pigtails, is at once
burlesque icon and school girl.
In the Dering Street gallery, Maloney will show both black and white and coloured works
on paper. Influenced by Willem de Kooning's women, the carefully composed abstract
drawings of the Russian avant-garde, and Cy Twombly's energetic calligraphic markmaking,
Maloney's monochromatic textured graphite rubbings and apparently
uncontrolled coloured scribbles are cut up and carefully arranged to make recognisable
images of glamorous women.
Born in London in 1961, Maloney went to Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and
Goldsmiths College, leaving in 1993. Solo exhibitions have included Johnen & Schottle
Cologne, (1998), Anthony d’Offay, London, (2000), Delfina Project Space, London,
(2001), Gian Ferrari Arte Contemporanea, Milan, (2003), Xavier Hufkens, Brussels,
(2004), Galerie Xippas, Paris, (2005), Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, (2007) and Tatintsian
Gallery, Moscow, (2007). Group shows have included Sensation, Young British Artists
from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London, (1997), Die Young Stay
Pretty, ICA, London, (1998), Neurotic Realism, Saatchi Gallery, London, (1999), Family
Fortunes, National Gallery, London, (2001), New Labour, Saatchi Gallery, London,
(2001), The Rowan Collection, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, (2002), Neue
Kunsthalle IV: Direct Painting, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, (2004), Behind
Innocence Gallery, Hyundai Gallery, Korea, (2006), Youth of Today, Schirn Kunsthalle
Frankfurt, (2006). Maloney last showed at Timothy Taylor Gallery in 2005.
Private View 15 April 2008, 6-8pm
Timothy Taylor Gallery
21 Dering Street
London, W1S 1AL
15 Carlos Place
London, W1K 2EX
Free admission