| Depth
Charge
29 October – 25
November 2010
View Installation Images
Download
Catalogue of Works
Paintings can be powerful
things. As a medium, painting has held privileged status
for centuries as the collector’s
object par excellence, and has somehow survived countless
attempts to debunk and deconstruct its privileged position.
So what is it about painting that makes it so special?
What does painting do that other media can’t?
For our inaugural exhibition,
the James Freeman Gallery is pleased to present “Depth Charge”, an
exhibition of works by Henrijs Preiss and Yuko Nasu,
two London-based artists who make a point of probing
the depths of painting’s powers from very different
perspectives. Henrijs Preiss will also be showing concurrently
at the Saatchi Gallery as part of the Newspeak:
British Art Now exhibition - Yuko exhibited at the Saatchi earlier
in the year as part of the Franks
Suss collection.
Both artists use their painting
to explore how images affect and influence us. Yuko
Nasu does this through
remembered portraits, often based on images from the
media relating to stories that affected her. One portrait
is of Raoul Moat as a cute young child, a baby-faced
tabloid image whose tragic contrast to the adult’s
reality resonated with the artist. In translating the
memory to painting, the fractured innocence of the child
and the sad portent of the man become bound together
in her sweeping gestural marks. The same applies to other
tragic figures from the papers, such as Baby P and a
solider killed in Afghanistan. Through recreating and
remembering these images in her painting, Yuko looks
to tap into the raw emotions that we come to associate
with a powerful image, and how we appropriate images
in very personal ways.
Henrijs
Preiss explores a
different aspect of painted imagery, approaching it
from a structural perspective.
By scouring art history to identify the most basic components
of visual language, Henrijs has built up a library of
archetypal motifs, symbols and compositions that are
common to all human artistic practice, regardless of
regional differences. These he embeds into complex, multi-layered
mandalas that tap into our most basic visual instincts.
The works seem both familiar and foreign; their aged
and worn surfaces hint at the historical continuity they
represent; and their almost religious feel echoes how
art and visual communication have always held a position
of primary importance for all societies. Henrijs’ paintings
are like looking into the hidden mechanics of the machine – complex,
fascinating, and overwhelming in their ambition.
For more information
or images, please contact
James Freeman – james @ jamesfreemangallery.com
|
“No 302” by
Henrijs Preiss
Acrylic & varnish
on wood, 2010
80cm x 80cm
“Lady” by Yuko Nasu
Oil on
paper, 2010
51cm x 40cm
|
