Simon Birch
dal 10/3/2015 al 28/4/2015
Segnalato da
10/3/2015
Simon Birch
Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hong Kong
The Inevitable. For the exhibition the artist presents Vertical strips have been eliminated within many of his large scale portraits and replaced with magnified details from past paintings.
Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong is pleased to announce The Inevitable, an exhibition of new
paintings by renowned Hong Kong-based artist Simon Birch. This is the second solo exhibition of
Birch’s work to be held at the Hong Kong gallery and it will run concurrently with Art Basel Hong
Kong.
Birch is celebrated for his gestural, thickly-impastoed portraits teeming with the angst and energy
of his sitters. These technically precise paintings capture the dynamism of his models through
broad, overlapping planes of color pulled across the canvas. Birch successfully conveys this
intensity of motion in The Sky was Aquamarine, Stroked with Clouds. She Could Smell the Grass and
Taste the Scent of Small, Crushed Flowers, 2014, the staggering figure seemingly shielding herself
in a vortex of color and movement, her body parts becoming fractured, geometric fields of colour
While a committed figurative painter, Birch has shifted to a more abstract approach to
representation in his recent work. Vertical strips have been eliminated within many of his large-
scale portraits and replaced with magnified details from past paintings. This spliced arrangement
offers an undulating cross section of his work, creating a more chaotic and nonfigurative
impression. Red Collider Unseen Fox, 2014, reaches near abstraction with its vigorous swathes of
paint expanding to the edges of the canvas, only providing a hint of a hunched figure cradling her
head in her hands, a pose that has appeared more literally in past works. While the vitality of his
sitters is still palpable, this stylistic transformation focuses more on the painterly process and
precision of his work
About the Artist
Born in 1974 in Brighton, England, Birch has lived and worked in Hong Kong for over twenty years.
He has had solo exhibitions in Beijing, Los Angeles, Miami, and Singapore and has participated in
group shows at the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Birch
has been awarded the prestigious Louis Vuitton Asian Art Prize and the Sovereign Asian Art Prize.
Birch has organized many large-scale multimedia installation projects in Hong Kong, most
notably HOPE & GLORY: A Conceptual Circus (2010) and Daydreaming With...The Hong Kong Edition
(2012) and is currently working on a multimedia installation in New York.
Image: SIMON BIRCH, The sky was aquamarine, stroked with clouds. She could smell the grass and taste the scent of small, crushed flowers, 2015, oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm (78 ⅗ x 98 ⅜)
Press Contact:
Blake Kwok, blake@benbrownfinearts.com
Opening: Wednesday, 11 March, 6-9.00 pm
Ben Brown Fine Arts
301 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street Ce
Mon - Sat 11am to 7pm