Tag: Simon Keenleyside
Simon Keenleyside
Undefined borders for unlimited perceptions
The group show includes the participation of 13 artists, almost all of them already in close relationship with the gallery, who were invited to challenge the title of the show in an ambitious attempt to disclose one of the most interesting moments of the creation process, each one through his/her personal research.
A reality where there are not boundaries, limits and rules is not credible; a reality where space, time and actions are not defined within schemes that are often strict and definite.
Because of external commands or personal considerations, we keep on imposing more and more interfering rules which create new boundaries and limit our thoughts.
Nevertheless, many of these limits are not that clear and that evident, but they result from our belonging to groups, cultures, traditions which – although they are reliable – hide the potentials and benefits of different points of view.
The artist, more than any other people, when carrying out creation processes, goes beyond the physical and psychological barriers, setting minds free and open to different perceptions.
Each invited artist has interpreted the title of the show by proposing one or more works, many of which have been created purposely for the show:
Simon Boudvin (FR) presents Auteurs, a project made of 8 snapshots taken in the streets and places of Paris where there are the statues of famous writers and sculptors: Bernard Palissy, Pierre de Ronsard, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Dante Alighieri, Georges Jacques Danton, Denis Diderot, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. The artist, climbing on the statues, took pictures at the height of their eyes, by showing their point of view.
Davide Cantoni (IT) went beyond the boundaries of the Earth with Galaxy M31, a large format artwork created purposely for this exhibition with his famous technique of the burned drawing made with magnifying glass and sun on paper.
Vittorio Corsini (IT) created Ready, a big carpet of sawdust and pigments reproducing the 4 flags of Papua-New Guinea, South Africa, Sweden and Mongolia. During the exhibition, it will be possible to mix the colors of the flags by walking on the artwork.
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain (BR) got inspired by the studies carried out by Nathaniel Bowditch in 1802 about the relationship between the letters of the alphabet and time zones, still used in navigation, to create A given time in a given place (Zulu time), a large wall drawing where a new map of the world is reproduced, showing the time zones with the cartographic and linguistic meanings.
Nina Saunders (DK) for the first time at the gallery, presents Haute Cuture, an art work purposely created for the exhibition, where starting from the cushion of a Chesterfield armchair, skillfully reshaped, and apparently ever changing, you guess a stuffed fox wearing a coyote mask.
Sarah Ciracì (IT )proposes La X Dimensione, lighting box with intermittent light able to hypnotize visitors’ eyes and take them to new dimension.
Berend Strik (NL) presents two new artworks created in New York, Orbs and Identity and Made in Brooklyn, where the embroidery and the fabrics hide and change the photographic basis on which they are applied.
Gian Paolo Striano (IT) has purposely created for the exhibition Domestic Hearth, an artwork made of lacquered wood, cathode tube and led, which investigates on the more and more undefined borders between art and design.
Simon Keenleyside (UK) presents the large painting on canvas Somebody calling from the other side, in the middle of which there is a large frontier tower, and two small paintings Take me back to that other shore and Curse the dark, where a boundary wall cuts into two the magical world of the artist, the landscape of Essex.
Benny Dröscher (DK) has painted two canvas were, as usual in his artworks, the perception of the absence of boundaries completely fills the artwork. On the intense sky blue of the canvas, symbolic elements of nature and abstract elements are painted in harmony, creating an image that goes beyond the canvas by invading the view of the visitor completely, so that canvas seem to be painted without a fixed direction, but they can be observed from any point of view.
Julien Berthier (FR) proposes the artwork Hypnos. Five stuffed pigeons, pulled down in anthropomorphic posture, wear fiberglass masks which represent Hypnos, the God of Sleep in Greek mythology. Courtesy of the artwork Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris.
Seulgi Lee (Korea) presents a re-interpretation of Don Quixote, a grey wooden cube on the top of which there are multicolor hairy skewers.
Adam Cvijanovic (USA) presents two new artworks both made through the flash and latex on Tyvek paper technique. One shows the ocean and the other one shows a wonderful and rich abandoned villa with a refined design.
Simon Keenleyside
In his new paintings, the English artist continues to explore the places where he had grown up and where he still lives nowadays: Essex, England.
Simon Keenleyside depicts these places with an astonishing ability to disclose the mystery and ambiguity around them; in his paintings he evokes not only physical places, but also mental states, desires and the anxieties that accompany him during his trips to discover the territory.
Most of the themes of his works are the elements-memories from the past which, scattered on the territory, characterize the landscapes of Essex: the remains of the First and Second World War, water towers and containers abandoned by local factories, partially demolished boundary walls which encircle the town. The presence of the ghosts from the past gives the landscapes a halo of mystery and at the same time it offers moments of sharing of an English collective memory.
In the new paintings, the artist re-interprets “his” landscape thanks to an intense light which sheds from the neighboring coastal suburbs and which is reflected and illuminates all the adjacent landscapes and, thus, creating a strong chromatic tension.
The result is given by the use of the fluorescent paint which characterizes the whole structure of his work.
In the works by Keenleyside, the materiality of the painting is always prominent; the act to add and to remove matter, to fill and to hide what has already been painted, contributes to the creation of a world full of surprises, where the painting goes beyond the matter and becomes landscape itself. The landscape is, thus, turned into a place where familiarity merges with dreamlike visions, and the transcendent beauty of a place – where the ordinary and the magic meet – is revealed.
Simon Keenleyside, 1975, lives and works in Great Britain. After his MA at the Royal College of Art, the artist exhibited his works at many exhibitions in the United Kingdom, in Denmark, in America and in Italy. In 2002, he was awarded the BOC Emerging Artist Award and in 2004 the Lexmark European Art Prize. His works are part of many important collections, like Boc group, Comme de Garcons, Hiscox plc, Mario Testino, Amlyn Collection, Marsh McLennan, RCA Collection, TI Group.