Natasha Kissell
dal 9/5/2012 al 15/6/2012
Segnalato da
9/5/2012
Natasha Kissell
Eleven Fine Art, London
Dream House, House of Dreaming. The paintings all feature aspirational architecture, "beautiful utopian visions of houses we would wish to possess but cannot", and present fantastical landscapes that can only be born out of the imagination.
If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. Gaston Bachelard
Eleven is pleased to present new paintings by Natasha Kissell in Dream House, House of Dreaming.
At home we dream of our desires, we allow our subconscious into our dreams at night, and we let our minds wander when day dream. Sometimes our dreams seem literal and at other times completely fanciful.
Kissell looks at dreaming from both younger and mature perspectives. As children we use the house to dream, as adults we imagine the house of our dreams. The paintings all feature aspirational architecture - beautiful utopian visions of houses we would wish to possess but cannot. This desire to accumulate fuels much of what we do, and in some ways, replaces the dreams we have as children which are not for possessions but for happiness in a more abstract form.
The paintings present fantastical landscapes that can only be born out of the imagination. Cities of the Mind represents a misty river shrouded in a magical light, out from which pops a modernist pod house - a house of one’s dreams. Cities nestle in the orchids, springing out from their centres as if waiting to be pollinated by this supernatural world. In Miniature World she invites the viewer to closely inspect the life of the undergrowth while simultaneously positioning the viewer from an aerial perspective, as looking down into this Utopia from another realm. She adopts an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ view to revisit a child-like state, making the viewer feel small in a strange giant world.
Along with her paintings, the exhibition features a dolls house similar to René Magritte's painting Personal Values. The walls are covered in clouds to subvert the typical rooms and instead represent dreaming and the unconscious mind. The house speaks of childhood and the dreaming that occurs when a child plays with it.
Typical of her style, she employs numerous artist historical references. Informed by Peter Doig’s imaginative, layered landscapes, her paintings radiate wonderment. Similarly, her work acknowledges George Shaw’s ability to utilise banal scenes of an ordinary environment and transform them into the extraordinary through using epic skies and atmospheric conditions. Conversely, oversized flora and fauna comparable to Thomas Heade’s, act as vehicles to project delicate imaginative elements into her dreamy worlds.
Natasha Kissell was born in 1978 and lives in Brighton. Her work is in the collections of, amongst others, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, the Saatchi Collection, the Ovitz Family Collection and Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee. Her work was featured in No New Thing Under the Sun at the Royal Academy in 2010. She was also included in the exhibition Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture in 2008 and 2009 at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, Yale School of Architecture Gallery, and Mills College Art Museum in California.
Image details: Natasha Kissell, Cities of the Mind, 2012. Oil on canvas, 58 x 78 in / 148 x 198 cm
For further information on Dream House, House of Dreaming or forthcoming exhibitions at Eleven please contact Susannah Haworth on 020 7823 5540 or on susannah@elevenfineart.com
Private view: Thursday 10th May 2012, 6 to 8pm
Eleven Fine Art
11 Eccleston Street - London, SW1W 9LX
Gallery Open
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 11am - 6pm,
Thursday 11am to 7pm, Saturday 11am - 4pm