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24/2/2009

Roland Hicks

Eleven Fine Art, London

Roland Hicks' meticulous hyperrealist paintings magnify the insignificant: bubbles, chewing gum, all the overlooked detritus of our daily life. For his first solo show at Eleven, he concentrates on tumbleweeds of fluff. Found by the artist, these mini-sculptures of the ephemeral become on the canvases, alluring semi-abstract figures. The tense relationship between figuration and abstraction is a recurrent feature of Hicks' work. Neither completely one nor the other, his paintings exist at the threshold between both. In this series, only the horizon line in the background allows us to situate the object in an illusionary three-dimensional space, and even this space is indeterminate. It's a limbo of dark, neutral colours, whose unique function is to highlight the sculptural quality of the object represented.

The starting point of a painting by Hicks is always a photograph, sometimes taken years before the final painting is made. The slow process of painting becomes in Hicks' hands, a way to reintroduce time and duration to an instantaneous photographic shot. The photographic images give to Hicks' works their internal logic and composition. Photography also lends to the paintings their visual qualities: like in a photograph, sharp elements seem to emerge above blurry, out of focus ones. The mechanical perception of a camera lens is transposed to the painting medium.

Hicks' choice of subjects imposes a sense of beauty on what is usually dismissed as unworthy of attention, even as dirty and unpleasant. Hicks reinvents objects to give them a new dignity. This isn't done without a sharp, tongue-in-cheek humor. The tumbleweeds of the exhibition bring with them a whole set of associations, from the windy silence that is imagined to follow a bad joke, to the boredom and emptiness of days without inspiration and the classic tumbleweeds of American prairies. With his own tumbleweeds, many times repeated like in the multiple frames of a film stock, Hicks sets up his macro-scale, domestic cinema.

Roland Hicks' work has recently been exhibited in John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize 25 at the Walker Art Gallery as part of the Liverpool Biennial. Previous solo shows include Give Me Every Little Thing (2007) touring from Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown to Ffotogallery, Cardiff; Nothing Can Stop Us Now (2003) at Hiscox Art Projects, London and I Can't Help Myself (2002) at The Market, London. Past group shows include Everyday is Like Sunday (2005) at Vertigo, London; Blow Up - New Painting and Photoreality (2004) at St Pauls Gallery, Birmingham and the NatWest Art Prize (1999) in London. His paintings are in numerous public collections including Land Securities, Saatchi Gallery, Oxford University Art Collection, Unilever and Hiscox.

Private view Wednesday 25th February 2009, 6-8pm

Eleven Fine Art
11 Eccleston Street - London
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 11.00 - 6.00, Thursday 11.00 - 7.00, Saturday 11.00 - 4.00
Free admission

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