Alison Jacques

Tim Stoner

04 May - 02 Jun 2007

© TIM STONER
Luna, 2005-2007
oil on linen
204 x 312 cms / 80 3/8 x 122 7/8 ins
TIM STONER

Opening Thursday 3 May, 6 - 8.30pm
4 May – 2 June

We are delighted to announce the opening of our new space designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates. The new gallery, set over 3,000 square feet and two floors, includes two ground-floor exhibition spaces, one of which is double-height. The gallery is located at 16-18 Berners Street, five minutes from Oxford Circus. The inaugural exhibition is British painter Tim Stoner and paves the way for an international, high profile programme of future exhibitions including Hélio Oiticica and Hannah Wilke. These exhibitions will run parallel respectively with Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour at Tate Modern in June and Panic Attack! featuring Hannah Wilke at the Barbican Art Gallery in July.

For the opening exhibition Tim Stoner will show a new body of work completed during the last three years in London and Ronda, Spain. Stoner explores the compositional possibilities that human gatherings create through communal activity; his paintings question our familiarity with vernacular images and our relationship to prototypes of social groups throughout history. He attempts to contrast anthropological and documentary models against inventions of the mind, reflecting on the state of our collective unconscious.

In the main gallery a series of large paintings includes ‘Growth’, which depicts a disciplined group of children stretching out in faith, connecting the earth to the heavens as if sprouting like trees as much as biological beings. The elements of light, bodies, land and sky are fused together in the form of an all-embracing aura. Stoner’s figures become archetypes of behavioural synchronisation where organised groups connect and embrace to keep the human chain moving. A series of smaller paintings in the second space show constellations of bodies dispersed through earthly, celestial and subterranean environments.

Stoner uses these impressions to project an idea of what humanities past could look like if superimposed upon our modern recollections - as if a shared inner archive is somehow entombed within us ready to be unlocked, as reflections of self, integration and transmutation.

“The subject of Stoner's work is light, and how painting both creates an illusory space and destroys it with its flatness. The figures imply movement and rhythm, but in painting this is impossible. The dance in painting - think Poussin, Renoir and Matisse - is always about this paradox between immobility and movement, time and timelessness. It is all just an accretion on the surface. What complex paintings they are. They make you realise what a rich, deceptive, unfinished business painting is”. Adrian Searle, The Guardian, April 2001

Tim Stoner (b. 1970) lives and works in London and Ronda, Spain. He studied at the Norwich School of Art, The Royal College of Art and the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. In 2001 Tim Stoner was the first-prize winner of the Beck’s Futures at the ICA, London. Museum solo shows include Junge Kunst, Wolfsburg (2003) and the Stedilijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (2002). International group shows include: 25 Years of the Deutschebank Collection, Berliner Guggenheim (2005); Nation, Frankfurter Kunstverein (2004); Britannia Works, Athens, British Council Show (2003); Exploring Landscape, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York (2003).

For information: contact Kaj Blunck on 020 7287 7675 or kaj@alisonjacquesgallery.com
Next exhibitions:
Hélio Oiticica: 6 June – 7 July, opening Tuesday 5 June, 6-8pm
Hannah Wilke: 12 July – 1 September, opening Wednesday 11 July, 6-8pm
 

Tags: Hélio Oiticica, Tim Stoner, Hannah Wilke