Oliver Osborne
10 Jun - 23 Jul 2015
OLIVER OSBORNE
The Neck
10 June - 23 July 2015
Giò Marconi is very pleased to announce The Neck, Oliver Osborne’s first solo show at the gallery. He will present a group of new paintings that include elements of figuration, appropriation and abstraction.
The neck connects head to body, and can be seen to represent the gap between thoughts and feelings, or figurative and abstract. Like any point of connection it is also a point of weakness and vulnerability, a narrow avenue through which we swallow and breathe.
Depicted in different ways, the show includes a rubber plant, a small orange pot, a pregnancy, a caveman, a dog, as well as other motifs and images. A text painting, Getränke (2015), makes use of the German word for Beverages and speaks perhaps of the painting process from studio (wet) to exhibition (dry). Commonly used to advertise Getränkemärkte in German towns and cities, the word summons a call for both refreshment and intoxication. Shown outside of its normal linguistic context it is abstracted; but in painting, where abstraction is legible, it appears figurative by the fact of it being text.
Language, comprehension and translation are taken as subject matter to explore different positions in painting, played out in a strict diet of oil, acrylic and silkscreen techniques. The paintings are straightforward in their presentation and deadpan in their humour, offering an attitude of silence rather than bombast.
Oliver Osborne (b. 1985, Edinburgh, Scotland) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Catherine Bastide, Brussels (2015), Maskulina Och Feminina (Europa) at Carl Kostyál, Stockholm (2015), Anna, Vilma Gold, London (2013), and Otto, Frutta, Rome (2013). Selected group exhibitions include Everything Falls Faster Than An Anvil, Pace Gallery, London (2014), Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2012), and The Call (FCO-CLJ-LTN), Peles Empire, Cluj (2011).
The Neck
10 June - 23 July 2015
Giò Marconi is very pleased to announce The Neck, Oliver Osborne’s first solo show at the gallery. He will present a group of new paintings that include elements of figuration, appropriation and abstraction.
The neck connects head to body, and can be seen to represent the gap between thoughts and feelings, or figurative and abstract. Like any point of connection it is also a point of weakness and vulnerability, a narrow avenue through which we swallow and breathe.
Depicted in different ways, the show includes a rubber plant, a small orange pot, a pregnancy, a caveman, a dog, as well as other motifs and images. A text painting, Getränke (2015), makes use of the German word for Beverages and speaks perhaps of the painting process from studio (wet) to exhibition (dry). Commonly used to advertise Getränkemärkte in German towns and cities, the word summons a call for both refreshment and intoxication. Shown outside of its normal linguistic context it is abstracted; but in painting, where abstraction is legible, it appears figurative by the fact of it being text.
Language, comprehension and translation are taken as subject matter to explore different positions in painting, played out in a strict diet of oil, acrylic and silkscreen techniques. The paintings are straightforward in their presentation and deadpan in their humour, offering an attitude of silence rather than bombast.
Oliver Osborne (b. 1985, Edinburgh, Scotland) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Catherine Bastide, Brussels (2015), Maskulina Och Feminina (Europa) at Carl Kostyál, Stockholm (2015), Anna, Vilma Gold, London (2013), and Otto, Frutta, Rome (2013). Selected group exhibitions include Everything Falls Faster Than An Anvil, Pace Gallery, London (2014), Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2012), and The Call (FCO-CLJ-LTN), Peles Empire, Cluj (2011).