Paul Morrison
10 Apr - 24 May 2008
PAUL MORRISON
British artist Paul Morrison is known for black and white images composed collage-style, as a pastiche of discrete, highly stylized representational forms, each of which appear derived from disparate graphic genres. Drawing inspiration from sources that range from popular cartoons to botanical drawings to Renaissance woodcuts, Morrison creates his graphic assemblages by manipulating found images. Colour is digitally removed and detail stripped away until the final motif is a black outline or silhouette of its former state. Morrison’s unique compositions afford viewers the opportunity to consider the intrinsic cognitive properties of each of the various graphic styles and the ways in which pictorial space is created through juxtaposition.
For the solo show at Alison Jacques Gallery, Paul Morrison will show a 21 foot long site-specific wall painting entitled Raphe, a term used to describe the longitudinal ridges that represent the part of the plant stem that is fused to the seed. Botanical subject matter such as modified primroses, pine trees and other plants in the foreground contrast in style and scale with one another and with the moonlit architecture in the background which appears to be enlarged from an Old Master woodcut.
British artist Paul Morrison is known for black and white images composed collage-style, as a pastiche of discrete, highly stylized representational forms, each of which appear derived from disparate graphic genres. Drawing inspiration from sources that range from popular cartoons to botanical drawings to Renaissance woodcuts, Morrison creates his graphic assemblages by manipulating found images. Colour is digitally removed and detail stripped away until the final motif is a black outline or silhouette of its former state. Morrison’s unique compositions afford viewers the opportunity to consider the intrinsic cognitive properties of each of the various graphic styles and the ways in which pictorial space is created through juxtaposition.
For the solo show at Alison Jacques Gallery, Paul Morrison will show a 21 foot long site-specific wall painting entitled Raphe, a term used to describe the longitudinal ridges that represent the part of the plant stem that is fused to the seed. Botanical subject matter such as modified primroses, pine trees and other plants in the foreground contrast in style and scale with one another and with the moonlit architecture in the background which appears to be enlarged from an Old Master woodcut.