Fiona Rae Press Release and Statement
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Fiona Rae: New Paintings 18 January – 23 February 2013 Timothy Taylor Gallery is delighted to announce its third solo exhibition by British artist Fiona Rae. These new large paintings, all 2012, share multifarious and interwoven techniques, patterns and passages that ebb and flow across their surfaces, but have quite different visual outcomes. I need gentle conversations and I always wish you every happiness with my whole heart in the distance have a pared down aesthetic; the overall ground colour is threaded with motifs reminiscent of the hanging gardens found in classical Chinese landscape painting, and the effect is one of extraordinary lightness and delicacy. The sun throws my sorrow away and Present party for you are animated by painterly swirls and flourishes over veils of dripped and poured paint, while Something is about to happen! depicts the aftermath of a violent painterly battle as an electrifying form explodes on the canvas like a firework display. Close examination of the paintings reveals fascinating small details and incidents like conversational digressions, such as the mathematical and astronomical symbols that dance across these paintings, reminiscent of those found in Dürerʼs star charts from the 16th century. Running through this series of paintings is a leitmotif of cartoonish pandas. Articulated in various ways, they function as abstract compositional devices as well as having both an absurd and uncanny presence. The artist writes: “These new paintings were kicked off when I bought a string of Chinese embroidered pandas from the Pearl River emporium in New York. The handmade stitching looks like colourful drawing on the black and white silk. The wobbliness of their facture gives them ambiguous expressions and status, so that they appear both ludicrous and ominous at the same time. Even more importantly, I could use them as a reason to make a painting. Sometimes itʼs hard to justify the act of painting; its expressive and gestural marks can seem unwarranted and unconnected to anything much in the so-called real world, and even worse, the nightmare of paintingʼs history haunts the studio. With these pandas as mascots, amulets, protagonists, victims, observers, or whatever their role in each painting might be, I can make a painting that has an angle or an eye on itself, while simultaneously being a full-blooded, full-on manifestation of painterly possibility. Iʼve always been intrigued by what itʼs possible to include in a painting; I have an iconoclastic approach to subject matter and formal concerns. If Iʼm told that youʼre not supposed to disrupt the picture plane, then I very much wish to do so immediately. Hence alongside what one might identify as high modernist painterliness, I use graphic signs, symbols, recognizable images and cartoons, spray paint, glitter, whatever seems like a good idea at the time. Itʼs not that I want to question in a self-conscious way the act of painting, itʼs just that I cannot pretend to the idealistic purity of a modernist artist. However I think itʼs vital to forge ahead with all the energy and positivity and self-belief that one can muster. Context and contingency are all: in these paintings the disparate elements are held in a suspension of disbelief. For the moment, a star shape is decorative and not decorative. A dotted line is informative and not informative. It all hangs together for a moment, and like a cartoon cell, everything might change in the next instant. The titles function in much the same way as the paintings; they are sad and funny bouquets of words that often donʼt quite make sense in a literal way, but do 15 Carlos Place London W1K 2EX Telephone 020 7409 3344 For further information please contact Carla Borel Email: [email protected] communicate an intention. I think the beauty and excitement of painting is its potential to present a world for the viewer to inhabit, without instructions as to how to negotiate and understand it.” Fiona Rae, November 2012 2012 saw the very successful touring exhibition of Fiona Raeʼs paintings from the last decade, Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century, at Leeds Art Gallery; the New Art Gallery Walsall and Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (forthcoming in April 2013). A joint exhibition with Dan Perfect will take place at Nottingham Castle Art Gallery and Museum in May 2014. Fiona Rae was born in Hong Kong in 1963, and attended Goldsmiths College from 1984–1987. She participated in Damien Hirstʼs Freeze exhibition in 1988, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1991. Rae was elected a Royal Academician in 2002, and served as a Tate Artist Trustee from 2005–2009. In 2011 she was appointed the first ever female Professor of Painting for the Royal Academy Schools, London, and she is currently the recipient of the Tate Membersʼ Artist Commission for 2011–2013. Previous solo museum exhibitions include: CCA Glasgow, 1990; Kunsthalle Basel, 1992; ICA, London, 1993–1994; Carré dʼArt - Musée dʼart contemporain de Nîmes, France, 2002. Group exhibitions in museums include: Promises, promises, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1989; Aperto, Venice Biennale, 1990; The British Art Show 1990; McLellan Galleries, Glasgow; Leeds City Art Gallery; Hayward Gallery, London; Turner Prize Exhibition 1991, Tate Gallery, London; Unbound: Possibilities in Painting, Hayward Gallery, London, 1994; Nuevas Abstracciones, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany; Museu dʼArt Contemporani, Barcelona, 1996; Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London; Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 1997–2000; Hybrids: International Contemporary Painting, Tate Liverpool, 2001; Painting Pictures: Painting and Media in the Digital Age, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 2003; Fiction @ Love / Forever Young Land, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China, 2006; Fiction @ Love / Ultra New Vision of Contemporary Art, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, 2006; Pictograms: The Loneliness of Signs, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, 2006–2007. Classified: Contemporary British Art from Tate Collection, Tate Britain, 2009; Plastic Culture: Legacies of Pop 1986-2008, Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston; The Exchange, Penzance; Bradford 1 Gallery, UK, 2009-2010; Between Film and Art, Kunsthalle Emden, Germany; Deutsche Kinemathek-Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin, 2011. Raeʼs paintings are held in prestigious public and private collections worldwide, including Tate Collection, London; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, UK; Carré dʼArt – Musée dʼart contemporain de Nîmes, France; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Essl Museum, Austria; Fonds National dʼArt Contemporain (FNAC), Paris; FRAC dʼIle de France, France; FRAC dʼAuvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Hamburger Bahnhof, Marx Collection, Berlin; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Musée Départemental dʼart contemporain de Rochechouart, France; Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; Southampton City Art Gallery, UK; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Warwick University Art Collection, UK. 15 Carlos Place London W1K 2EX Telephone 020 7409 3344 For further information please contact Carla Borel Email: [email protected] Fiona Rae Fiona Rae Something is about to happen!, 2012 Present party for you, 2012 Oil and acrylic on canvas Oil and acrylic on canvas 84 x 69 in. / 213.4 x 175.3 cm 84 x 69 in. / 213.4 x 175.3 cm Fiona Rae Fiona Rae The sun throws my sorrow away, 2012 I need gentle conversations, 2012 Oil and acrylic on canvas Oil and acrylic on canvas 84 x 69 in. / 213.4 x 175.3 cm 84 x 69 in. / 213.4 x 175.3 cm 15 Carlos Place London W1K 2EX Telephone 020 7409 3344 For further information please contact Carla Borel Email: [email protected] .