Dexter Dalwood
dal 11/10/2000 al 18/11/2000
Segnalato da
11/10/2000
Dexter Dalwood
Gagosian Gallery, London
In this new group of darkened and intensified work, Dalwood's interest shifts to depicting interiors, which related to critical moments of contemporary history, or scenes of celebrity tragedy. As a genre, painters of contemporary history are almost extinct but Dalwood reinvigorates this style by utilizing our fascination with the macabre and our obsessive intrigue with the lives of the famous.
New Paintings.
This is the first exhibition of Dalwood's work since he was featured in the Saatchi Gallery's New Neurotic Realism exhibition where his paintings of fictional interiors of actual places and celebrity homes were greeted with great degree of critical admiration and enthusiasm.
In this new group of darkened and intensified work, Dalwood's interest shifts to depicting interiors, which related to critical moments of contemporary history, or scenes of celebrity tragedy. As a genre, painters of contemporary history are almost extinct but Dalwood reinvigorates this style by utilizing our fascination with the macabre and our obsessive intrigue with the lives of the famous. He enlivens the work by incorporating elements or sections of styles or paintings by well-known twentieth century painters.
"Brian Jones Swimming Pool" is painted as if the artist were standing at the bottom of a drained swimming pool, looking up towards the edge. The inside of the pool resembles a beautiful blue and white abstract painting by Clyfford Still. In "Mount Carmel, Waco," a stationary fan, the ubiquitous horror movie symbol, hangs over a brightly swirled carpet, before a small wooden altarpiece. Outside the bleak landscape with a solitary hut on a hill refers directly to an Andrew Wyeth painting of the West. Another painting to indulge our often morbid interest in contemporary myth is "Kurt Cobain's Greenhouse."
Dexter Dalwood was born in Bristol, England in 1960. He studied at the Royal College of Art in London and had his first solo exhibition at the Clove Building, London in 1992.
In 1998, Dalwood exhibited the paintings Laboratoire Garnier and the Liberace Museum at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in the critically acclaimed show of new British art, "Die Young, Stay Pretty." Curated by Martin Maloney, this exhibition highlighted an emerging tendency among young British artists towards the painterly and partly playful.
The following year, Dalwood's paintings, including The Queen's Bedroom and Studio 54 among others, were shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The much publicized exhibition, "Neurotic Realism: Part Two," aimed to show a new character of the British art scene, and succeeded in revealing Dalwood as a major talent within it.
Recently, his work has been included in "Sausages and Frankfurters," an exhibition of recent British and German paintings from the Ophiuchus Collection in Greece and "Twisted: Urban and Visionary landscapes in Contemporary Painting," at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.
His work has featured in various publications, most notably "Young British Art -The Saatchi Decade" (Booth Clibborn Editions, London 1999) and "New Neurotic Realism" (Saatchi Gallery Publication, 1998).
For complete artist biography sand an email.
Gagosian Gallery - 8 Heddon Street - London - W1R 7LH - Tel: 44 020 7292 8222 - Fax: 44 020 7292 2220