calendario eventi  :: 

X

23/3/2004

Apopalyptical

Houldsworth Gallery, London

Gordon Cheung, Kenny Hunter, Matthew Radford

Post-modernist, post-pop, post-feminist, but never post-apocalyptic, each generation feels that they must be closer than the last to a point of finality and destruction. It is the oldest revelation, mixing terror with hope, innovation with timeless tradition in the aesthetic of the monumental sublime. Taking images that are so familiar to us - Le Corbusier's modernist housing units, the bellowing mushroom cloud of the atom bomb, the Statue of Liberty or Lichtenstein's rocket, the artists in Apopalyptical re-examine the pop banality of the regurgitated image, through the glitches and nuances of the artists' intervention.

Gordon Cheung , influenced by residencies in Pakistan and Japan, reassesses the idea of multiculturalism and belonging in his presentations of fictional landscapes. Made up of patches of spray painting, with its perfect gradients offering a hollow sunset, against the collage of newspaper print, overlaid with printed images of sublime landscapes, Cheung's 'paintings' are anti-romantic configurations of imagined places. Having limited himself to using the Financial Times in his recent work, Cheung's waterfalls and trees bleed numbers, suggesting a new aesthetic - the techno sublime of the global economy. Gordon Cheung has recently exhibited in Yes I am a Long Way from Home with Peter Doig, Paul Morrison and George Shaw at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Herbert Read Gallery and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art; at Gallery Corridor, Iceland and the Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester.

A disinterested girl stands crafted from grey plastic reinforced with glass, holding aloft a bunch of flowers, she is one of Kenny Hunters anti-monuments that throw into question the stone and bronze sites of memory and mourning that proliferate in our cities. Feedback Loop buzzes with references, both art historical and popular, suggesting the elliptical nature of art. These sculptures bring a collective memory and cultural history to bear upon diverse themes and items. Kenny Hunter has had numerous solo exhibitions including the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and the Arnolfini, Bristol. Collections include the Scottish Arts Council, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Aberdeen Art Gallery and the British School in Athens.
Roads and bombs, flyovers and crowds sit side by side in the paintings of Matthew Radford . Images that have stuck in the artist's mind and refuse to let go filter through on to the canvas. Pixels in a newspaper photograph become complex painterly marks that move between the abstract and the familiar, as the scene falls into focus. These are Radford's most complex paintings to date, weaving grids and images together to re-present a world that we thought we knew. Looking down upon unsuspecting crowds and traffic jams we are placed in an unnerving omnipotent position. Radford's conclusion appears to be that apocalypse is not revolution, but evolution. Matthew Radford currently has a solo exhibition at Gillingham Art Gallery and has recently started working on print projects with Alan Cristea Gallery, London. The Metropolitan Museum, New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London have just purchased new works.

Image:
Gordon Cheung
Hypnotised by the Spiralling Short-Circuited Cycle of Fear and Fascination, 2003
acrylic, FT stock listings, ink and oil on board
37.5 x 50 cm, 14 3/4 x 19 3.4 in

The gallery is open:
Mon-Fri 10am-5.30pm
Sat 10.30am-1pm

Houldsworth
33-34 Cork Street London W1S 3NQ
Tel: +44 (0)20 7434 2333
Fax: +44 (0)20 7434 3636

stampa

permanent link