Tim Blake
dal 3/7/2003 al 31/7/2003
Segnalato da
3/7/2003
Tim Blake
Catto Contemporary, London
'Street chic and urban glamour' are clearly the primary influences for Tim Blake’s work. Imagery borrowed from style magazines, such as Dazed and Confused and ID; are reworked into fine and delicate portraiture.
'Street chic and urban glamour' are clearly the primary influences for Tim Blake’s work. Imagery borrowed from style magazines, such as Dazed and Confused and ID; are reworked into fine and delicate portraiture. A cropped band, like an enlarged photographic contact sheet form the central focus of these paintings, which are complimented by a graphic designed compositional framework.
This interest in youth culture allows the artist to explore this seemingly seductive world, where violence lurks just beneath the surface. For Tim Blake, this has a very real and personal relevance. Some years ago, whilst working as a club bouncer, Tim was left with 21 stitches in his face, after a close encounter with a gang member. Recently, some parts of the media and the government have tried to link the spread of gun crime to Rap and R’N’B music, blaming groups who seem to glamourise gangster lifestyle. Is this where fact and fiction gets blurred? Where the film and music promo ends and reality begins? Tim Blake is aware of this uneasy duality, therefore, we find in his work a cinematic quality, utilising pictorial effects to deconstruct elements of the media’s language. Blake states; ‘I try to create a celluloid make-believe world in paint, that reflects my immediate surroundings and the consumer driven milieu I live’. These paintings don’t simply try to imitate real life, but draw on signs and clichés used in the media.’
The reclaiming, reworking and re-inventing of popular culture is the artist’s post-modernistic way of making the work accessible to a generation brought up on a diet of sound bites and slick marketing.
Catto Contemporary
75a Leonard Street
London EC2 4QS
Tel: 020 7729 0555
Fax: 020 7613 0201