Sadie Coles

DAVID KORTY

David Korty's landscapes have become markedly more populated. Earlier paintings evoked the atmosphere of the urban landscape through architecture, space and intimations of climate. The focus has now shifted towards streets bustling with pedestrians, cyclists and car drivers, thronging public squares, visitors on the steps and at the information desk of a museum. Korty enters the fray and conjures up the excitement of the crowded metropolis and the hurly burly of city life.
Korty conveys a sensory encounter with our surroundings. As he explores the effect of light and colour on glass, water and texture, the drama is in this interplay rather than in the scene depicted. In these new paintings he has introduced stronger geometric elements and a more distilled palette, combining oil and wax pencil to a denser, more forceful effect. The overall impression is bolder, the aesthetic more stylized, as Korty taps out his own pictorial Morse code.

© David Korty
Untitled
2006
oil on linen
147cm x 183cm