Alicia Paz: Bête-Belle oil, acrylic and buttons on canvas, 116 x 89 cm, 45 3/4 x 35 in Painting Unperfect Gordon Cheung, Peter Lamb, Justin Mortimer, Alicia Paz First and foremost these artists are painters - standing back and intuitively considering their work, they engage with their canvases with the weight of art history bearing down on them. They attack this burden in an iconoclastic manner with languages of surrealism and pop-art at their finger tips and yet they are fundamentally sincere, reverential, perhaps even naïve. The artists in "Painting Unperfect" produce paintings that aim to surprise themselves as much as the viewer. With beguiling skill they construct with the knowledge that they live in a world bombarded by images and new technologies that continuously bring about mini revolutions in seeing. The only way to make work is to acknowledge the problem and to do it anyway - the result is an explosion of ideas opening up a portal that shoots back to the early epiphanies of the enlightenment and forward to a hyper galactic highway of the future. We can imagine, and rightly so, that these new generation painters have in one hand an oil stained Sotheby's catalogue and in the other the latest copy of Photo-shop. Humour is tempered with beauty, absurdity with poignancy, history with innovation - this is to paint in the unperfect. This is the first exhibition of new works by Justin Mortimer since he won "East International" in 2004. Mortimer came to prominence painting portrait commissions of prominent figures, including the Queen and David Bowie and Iman, his recent work represents a sharp and exciting departure. Alicia Paz presents new work alongside a piece exhibited in "East International", 2004. Paz is in many collections including the Cerès Museum, France, Hanlim Museum, Taejon, Korea, City of Vitry-sur-Seine, France, City of Valognes, France, "Fond Municipal d'Art Contemporain", City of Paris, France, "Fond Régional d'Art Contemporain d'Ile de France" (FRAC), Corporations: Lafuma, Schlumberger and will concurrently be exhibiting a solo project at Ruth Benzacar Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Following Gordon Cheung's solo exhibition at Houldsworth in 2004, he will be exhibiting in the British Art Show 2005/6 and numerous international projects. Peter Lamb enjoyed his first solo show in LA last year with Kontainer Gallery and is currently exhibiting with Matt Franks, Ian Dawson and George Doneo in "Do Not Ask Me Who I am". Lamb is in numerous private collections and has recently become part of the Deutsche Bank Collection, London. Exhibition: 2 June - 9 July 2005 Gallery hours: Tues-Fri 10am - 5.30pm, Sat 10am - 4pm Houldsworth Gallery 33-34 Cork Street UK-London W1S 3NQ Telephone +44 (0)20 7434 2333 Fax +44 (0)20 7434 3636 Email gallery@houldsworth.co.uk www.houldsworth.co.uk |
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