BARTHOLOMEW BEAL. A Heap of Broken Images

Transcription

1 BARTHOLOMEW BEAL A Heap of Broken Images

2 BARTHOLOMEW BEAL A Heap of Broken Images 24 June - 29 August 2014 This catalogue provides an insight into a larger body of work. To receive a comprehensive e-catalogue please contact contemporary@faslondon.com The Fine Art Society c o n t e m p o r a r y

3 FOREWORD It is with great pleasure that we host Bartholomew Beal s first exhibition here at the gallery. Bartholomew Beal is a striking name but not one that many know yet. Not only is this his first major gallery show, but it also sets the record for the youngest artist to stage a solo exhibition at The Fine Art Society since it was founded in It was a painless decision to debut his arresting work at New Bond Street, it is a rare treat to find an emerging artist with such an assured and authentic voice. I was instantly taken in by his paintings; he was among a tiny number of graduates across the London Art School shows working in a colourful, figurative manner and the only one I encountered that tempered the appealing nature of the first look with a darker and multifaceted underbelly. I was not the only one attracted to this new voice; by the time I met the artist himself everything he had ever painted was sold. After his museum residency and exhibition in Derby the artist settled in his first studio in East London and set about painting up a storm for us. Beal comes from a literary family and professes a passion for T.S. Eliot. His masterful poem The Waste Land is the genesis for the young artist s new body of work. The exhibition title, A Heap of Broken Images is borrowed directly from the poem and neatly describes Beal s paintings. There may be a specific point of reference in these works but the creative journey is far from certain; his canvasses often showing traces of several other ghost paintings which are crucial fragments of the story of that painting. Likewise, Eliot s powerful poem jumps between languages, characters and points of view making it a very natural and ripe starting point for Beal. Beal walks a fine line between referencing the specifics of his poetic source material and surrendering himself to the possibilities of beautiful accidents inherent in the process of painting. The generalised man in the middle of each painting leaves much to be concluded, and his surroundings are hints and suggestions, but nothing final. These are paintings that work on many levels and best on several viewings; what might seem at first glance daft or comical gives way to something less lighthearted and conversely some of his lonely figures possess an admirable self-contained nature. Like the great poem, no passage is singular, static or empty. This summer exhibition is longer than most we host at the gallery in order to expose this bright new talent to the widest audience possible. This exhibition was co-curated by our brilliant Gallery Manager, Sara Terzi who has done a great job. Both she and Bartholomew possess a passion and wisdom beyond their years and make a wonderful team. Kate Bryan Director The Fine Art Society - Contemporary

4 I Read, Much of the Night, 2014 mounted on board 44 x 22 cm Bartholomew Beal is a leading member of a fascinating new generation of artists. He represents a number of things that give one hope for the notion of an avant-garde in the visual arts, at a time when what professes to be avant-garde, and is supported as such by our great official institutions, seems increasingly confused and stultified uncertain about where to go or what to do next. Let me enumerate some of the things that make his work to me at least particularly interesting. First, very obviously, there is the emphasis on the visual, the pleasure of the eye. In contemporary circumstances, artistic developments seems to offer a rhythmic oscillation between two poles; what is visual, often to the apparent exclusion of any kind of intellectual content; and what is conceptual a mere diagram or statement, intended to make us think rather than actually enjoy what we are looking at. There has also, increasingly been an oscillation between what is material things made of stuff (though often not of the kind of stuff we expect an art work to be made of) and the aggressively immaterial. The last time there was much emphasis on painting, as a dominant medium of avant-garde expression, was during the rise of the Neo-Expressionist movement in the late 1970s, which culminated in the controversial A New Spirit in Painting exhibition held at the Royal Academy in Now the YBAs have moved into their middle, one might almost say their menopausal years, and once again it is time for something new. Like many avant-garde impulses, his work has its roots in a return to tradition. A similar impulse inspired the young Pre-Raphaelites in the mid-19th century, and showed itself again in the return to Neo-Classicism which manifested itself in the work of Picasso and others during and immediately after World War I. He takes pleasure in the sophisticated manipulation of paint, and his work has a seductive sparkle that has been absent from painting for too long. It also, and quite openly, possesses literary content, since all of the works shown here are based on T.S. Eliot s great Modernist masterpiece The Waste Land. In fact, the paintings go several steps further than this, by taking into account Eliot s own use of half-concealed literary references. What is very contemporary about these paintings is their use of the idea of the non-finito. Beal speaks of his favorite treatment of paint, sitting decided figures next to elements of painting which are unfinished or ambivalent. Essentially the spectator is asked to look at them, not as things already frozen in time, but as statements that are still in the process of evolving, capable of morphing into another form, or series of forms, the instant one looks away from them. the nineteenth century artists such as Boldini and Sorolla. In none of these, however, is the manipulation of what is apparently finished and what is not, used in away that is so neatly in harmony with our own 21st century perceptions of a world that is constantly in a condition of flux. These are paintings designed to give pleasure a pleasure that is only on the surface uncomplicated, but which becomes increasingly subversive the more closely we look. Edward Lucie-Smith Writer and Art Critic ESSAY Beal s work is much subtler than the rather hectoring art produced at that time, which was rapidly superseded by the various experiments initiated by the YBAs (Young British Artists), culminating in the survey show Sensation! which took the RA by storm in Effects of this kind were of course known in the past. One finds them in the work of leading Baroque artists, among them Velazquez and Hals, and also in the work of Goya. In slightly humbler (though often flashier) form they can be found in the paintings of turn of

5 The Man with Three Staves, x 60 cm

6 Under this Red Rock, 2014 mounted on board 105 x 85 cm The Hyacinth Girl, x 185 cm

7 Handful of Dust, cm diameter We Drank Coffee, and Talked for an Hour, 2014 Oil on board 100 x 58 cm

8 The Sailor (Study II), x 25 cm The Sailor (Study I), 2014 Oil on board 30 x 25 cm The Sailor, x 38 cm

9 What are the Roots that Clutch, x 150 cm Haunted, x 105 cm

10 Those are Pearls, x 30 cm Shelter, x 25 cm Madame Sosostris, x 51 cm

11 Fixed his Eyes before his Feet, 2014 mounted on board 35 cm diameter Where do you Wait, cm diameter What Branches Grow, x 38 cm

12 Sybil, x 25 cm The Drowned Sailor (Study), 2014 mounted on board 43 cm diameter

13 Born 1989 Lives and works in London Education / BA Fine Art Painting, Wimbledon College of Art / Foundation in Art and Design, University of Gloucestershire Solo Exhibitions 2013 / Saint Monday and Thereby Hangs a Tale, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby 2013 / Biscuit. I ve kept you half, Mall Gallery, London (with Eleanor Watson) Prizes 2012 / Jonathan Vickers Residency, Derwent Valley MIlls World Heritage Site (Oct Jul 2013) 2012 / Landmark Plc Fine Art Award 2011 / Finalist of the Hans Brinker Student Painting Prize, Amsterdam Curation 2012 / Launch, Wimbledon Gallery Space in partnership with Cultural Olympiad Group Exhibitions 2013 / Memory and Desire Part 1, Theobald Jennings Gallery, London 2012 / FLOCK, GX Gallery, London 2012 / Wimbledon College of Art Degree Show, London

14 Published in an edition of 750 copies The Fine Art Society Contemporary 148 New Bond Street London W1S 2JT +44 (0) For the exhibition A Heap of Broken Images 24 June - 29 August 2014 Catalogue The Fine Art Society Contemporary Text the authors ISBN Text Foreword by Kate Bryan Essay by Edward Lucie-Smith Design Sara Terzi Printed in UK by ArtQuarters Press Photography Image courtesy the artist and Gina Soden Cover The Drowned Sailor, x 185 cm With thanks to Jason Colchin-Carter and Isis Phoenix Arts IPA The Fine Art Society c o n t e m p o r a r y