Neil Farber
dal 16/11/2011 al 13/1/2012
Segnalato da
16/11/2011
Neil Farber
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (new space), London
Ursa Major amplifies the surreal, cartoon-like qualities of Farber's small works. In a poignant constellation of absurdist drama, the showdebuts the artist's new series of large and visceral paintings and drawings.
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to present Ursa Major, a solo exhibition of new works by Winnipeg-based artist, Neil Farber.
Ursa Major debuts Neil Farber’s new series of large and visceral paintings and drawings. Together, these works make up a poignant constellation of absurdist drama, echoing and amplifying the surreal qualities of the artist’s work made with the artist collective, The Royal Art Lodge.
The viewer is invited on a visceral painted journey where mixtures of acrylic, pouring medium, ink and gloss gels create abstract configurations of Farber’s trademark ‘heads’, alongside pools of blood and phantasmatic landscapes.
Farber’s paintings and drawings are adorned with a sharp wit and darkly comic sensibility. His grand tableaux present a host of mythological and psychological creatures and caricatures from our contemporary political landscape. We are confronted by a cast of criminals, religious characters, and anonymous, anthropomorphic figures; often accompanied by automatic hand-written annotations that recall concrete and surrealist poetry.
Farber’s characters appear within humorous and dislocated stories that he articulates through a complex engagement with the possibilities of the white page or painting surface. His unconventional ‘broken’ narratives emerge through a formal repetition akin to that of early minimalist works. For Farber, painting is over and beyond an act of representation. His ‘heads’ bubble on the surface, gazing almost knowingly outwards and reminding the viewer of their luscious surface and objectivity.
Neil Farber has recently exhibited at La Maison Rouge, Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Drawing Center, New York, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, the Arken Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, Sies + Höke, Dusseldorf, Center for Contemporary Art, New Orleans, and Seoul Museum of Art, Korea. Farber's work is held in the collections of MoMA, New York, West Collection, Pennsylvania and Olbricht Collection, Essen and Berlin.
Image: Neil Farber, Interpretive Schooling 2011, mixed media on birch, 30 x 40 in
Private view: Thursday 17 November 2011 18.00-20.30
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
6 Heddon Street - London
Hours: Monday-Friday 10-6, Saturday 10-4
Free admission