Paul Morrison
17 Mar - 23 Apr 2005
Press Release
PAUL MORRISON
17 March - 23 April, 2005
Private View: Wednesday 16 March, 6 - 8 pm
"Drawing on plant imagery from popular and classical references, Morrison's breathtaking compositions produced by eliminating colour, leave the viewer to project their own associated vision onto the canvas, utilizing 'colour from behind the eye'. Morrison's films combine heavily modified footage from a number of different sources that are manipulated to introduce a new focus on light and shadow."
Enrique Juncosa, Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2003.
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to present a solo show of new work by British artist Paul Morrison who has gained wide international recognition for his bold graphic-style black and white landscape paintings, site-specific wall paintings and films. The exhibition will feature a new film and a series of new works on canvas.
Up to now, Morrison's imagery has fused cartoon, scientific and art historical material ranging from botanical illustrations and Disneyesque flowers to old master paintings. In the new work, Morrison continues to explore the boundaries of landscape with an explosion of new imagery referencing Northern European Renaissance woodcuts. Together this series of paintings creates a new landscape: a 16th century castle by a lake, a blazing forest, uprooted daffodils and a flowering thistle all set within a backdrop of painted wood grain and half visible horizon lines. Optical illusions such as an insect’s viewpoint or a chink of landscape through a fence add to the bizarre nature of the world which Morrison presents. The paintings are acutely precise with hard-edged rendering of the subject matter and, as always, painted in black and white so that the viewer can project his own associated colour onto the landscape before him. For the first time Morrison will introduce the genre of portraiture into his work with a painting of an elaborately dressed young man, based on a woodcut by the 16th century German sculptor and printmaker Peter Flötner. Also, projected in the gallery will be Morrison’s new film ‘Acrospire‘. Like the paintings, the film is monochromatic yet manipulated in such a way that it is full of atmospheric contrasts, collating modified fragments from movies like 'Puppet on a Chain', 'Gay Purr-ee', 'Andrei Rublev', 'The Black Windmill', 'Snow White' and 'The Hills Have Eyes'.
Paul Morrison was born in Liverpool, England (1966) and studied at Goldsmiths College, London (1998). He has exhibited widely in US museums Including Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Massachusetts; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and The Drawing Center, New York. In Europe, recent museum solo shows include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo (2003); Magasin, Grenoble; Southampton City Art Gallery and Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2002). Recent Publications include Paul Morrison, Black Medick published by Imschoot, utigevers (2004).
For information, contact: tel: 0207 287 7675 / luke@alisonjacquesgallery.com
Next exhibition: Christian Flamm: ‘Realism of the Heart’, 27 April - 28 May, 2005
PAUL MORRISON
17 March - 23 April, 2005
Private View: Wednesday 16 March, 6 - 8 pm
"Drawing on plant imagery from popular and classical references, Morrison's breathtaking compositions produced by eliminating colour, leave the viewer to project their own associated vision onto the canvas, utilizing 'colour from behind the eye'. Morrison's films combine heavily modified footage from a number of different sources that are manipulated to introduce a new focus on light and shadow."
Enrique Juncosa, Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2003.
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to present a solo show of new work by British artist Paul Morrison who has gained wide international recognition for his bold graphic-style black and white landscape paintings, site-specific wall paintings and films. The exhibition will feature a new film and a series of new works on canvas.
Up to now, Morrison's imagery has fused cartoon, scientific and art historical material ranging from botanical illustrations and Disneyesque flowers to old master paintings. In the new work, Morrison continues to explore the boundaries of landscape with an explosion of new imagery referencing Northern European Renaissance woodcuts. Together this series of paintings creates a new landscape: a 16th century castle by a lake, a blazing forest, uprooted daffodils and a flowering thistle all set within a backdrop of painted wood grain and half visible horizon lines. Optical illusions such as an insect’s viewpoint or a chink of landscape through a fence add to the bizarre nature of the world which Morrison presents. The paintings are acutely precise with hard-edged rendering of the subject matter and, as always, painted in black and white so that the viewer can project his own associated colour onto the landscape before him. For the first time Morrison will introduce the genre of portraiture into his work with a painting of an elaborately dressed young man, based on a woodcut by the 16th century German sculptor and printmaker Peter Flötner. Also, projected in the gallery will be Morrison’s new film ‘Acrospire‘. Like the paintings, the film is monochromatic yet manipulated in such a way that it is full of atmospheric contrasts, collating modified fragments from movies like 'Puppet on a Chain', 'Gay Purr-ee', 'Andrei Rublev', 'The Black Windmill', 'Snow White' and 'The Hills Have Eyes'.
Paul Morrison was born in Liverpool, England (1966) and studied at Goldsmiths College, London (1998). He has exhibited widely in US museums Including Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Massachusetts; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and The Drawing Center, New York. In Europe, recent museum solo shows include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo (2003); Magasin, Grenoble; Southampton City Art Gallery and Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2002). Recent Publications include Paul Morrison, Black Medick published by Imschoot, utigevers (2004).
For information, contact: tel: 0207 287 7675 / luke@alisonjacquesgallery.com
Next exhibition: Christian Flamm: ‘Realism of the Heart’, 27 April - 28 May, 2005