Rachel Howard
dal 10/10/2011 al 21/12/2011
Segnalato da
10/10/2011
Rachel Howard
Blain|Southern, London
Folie A Deux. The artist has created a series of intricately linked paintings, hung as triptychs, diptychs and stand-alone works, which subtly explore this disturbing malady.
Folie à Deux, French for ‘madness of two', is the clinical definition for a psychosis in which delusional beliefs are transmitted from one individual to another. For her first exhibition at Blain|Southern, the acclaimed British artist Rachel Howard has created a series of intricately linked paintings, hung as triptychs, diptychs and stand-alone works, which subtly explore this disturbing malady.
Folie à Deux can manifest itself in benign and extreme forms, and Howard was struck by a series of recorded case studies. One of these involved a paranoid married couple who both believed intruders were entering their house, spreading dust and ‘wearing down their shoes’; another documented the incident of twin sisters, one of whom provoked the other to run into the path of an oncoming car having done so herself a few seconds earlier.
Howard’s body of work deals with this notion of two people forming an intense or symbiotic relationship, as alluded to in the central painting of the exhibition, entitled Folie à Deux, which shows a heavily pregnant woman lying on her back, head outstretched and legs splayed.
Walter Sickert’s paintings provide another stimulus and reference point, in particular his painting What Shall We Do AboutThe Rent? Just as Sickert depicted intimate scenes of desolation, so Howard’s paintings speak of the emotional tensions that exist within the routines of everyday life. The artist examines commonplace domestic objects including a table, chair and lamp, but depicts these from unusual or unnerving perspectives, suggesting the multifaceted or unfixed state of mind implicit in Folie à Deux.
In Howard’s trademark style, the gravitational pull causes the paint to seep down the canvases, so that it seems to be clinging on to the works’ surfaces, mirroring the acts of desperation that encapsulate the essence of this exhibition. Howard’s new work demonstrates the fragility of the human condition, which can be easily unhinged by those around us. As Sartre said: “Hell is other people”.
Image: Rachel Howard, Folie à deux , 2011, acrylic, household gloss and oil on canvas, 22.9 x 27.9 cm. Photography: Peter Mallet
Opening: 11th October 6-8pm
Blain|Southern
21 Dering Street London
Hours: monday to Friday: 10-18. Saturday 10-17
Admission free