Peter Davies
16 Nov - 21 Dec 2012
PETER DAVIES
INVOCATION
16 November – 21 December 2012
The Approach is pleased to announce the third solo show by Peter Davies, INVOCATION. The exhibition is comprised of six large-scale black & white paintings that have been laboriously hand rendered from different small-scale repetitive marks or shapes. In comparison to the colourful, painted text-based proclamations on the art world that have dominated Davies’ artistic oeuvre, the new series of monochrome paintings in INVOCATION might seem relatively mute. However closer viewing reveals that despite favouring a more subversive form of communication they still make a great deal of noise.
Whereas Davies’ previous focus was an attempt at laying bare the invisible hierarchies within the world of art, now the daily activity of making work has become his obsession and the paintings themselves effectively byproducts. Taking a stricter approach to the painting process, Davies’ has distilled his practice to its most essential, core elements. His aim is consciously more elusive, casting the work in a colder light than we’ve previously seen. The obsessive mark making and attempts at visual organisation of past works are still present, but the precise and immaculate finish has been abandoned in recognition of the handmade. Geometric arrangements filled with the pleasing irregularities and imperfections rendered by human intervention, the paintings are an appreciation of time, each mark made a tally of hours to completion.
Scale and position of the viewer have also become crucial in our reading of the work. Depending on the perspective from which each painting is examined, at least two different paintings emerge: one depicting gradated subtle imagery that melds together from a distance and the other, revealed as the viewer advances, an intense, industriously made process painting. Each is a system that falls apart and contradicts itself. They are fallible- objective as an idea, but subjective in their realisation. An embodiment of creative dichotomy, they are at once an optically challenging record of painstaking time spent in the studio and holistic representation of a flickering landscape visually humming with a mass of minute parts.
Peter Davies lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include: The Indiscipline of Painting International Abstraction from the 1960’s to Now, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre (2012), Tate St. Ives, UK, (2011); Art, curated by Michael Craig-Martin, Galerie Haas Und Fuchs, Berlin, Germany (2010); The Epoch of Perpetual Happiness, The Approach, London, UK (2010); The Making Of Art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (2009); Idiolects, Brown Gallery, London, UK (2008), The Glass Onion Shop, Riflemaker at the A Foundation, London, UK (2008); Previous John Moores Prizewinners, The Walker, Liverpool, UK (2008); Starstruck: Contemporary Art and the Cult of Celebrity, The New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK (2008); In The Beginning, University Art Gallery, University Of California San Diego, USA (2008); Drawing 2007, The Drawing Room, London, UK (2007); It Was The Best Of Time Outs, It Was The Worst Of Time Outs, Seventeen, London, UK (2007)
INVOCATION
16 November – 21 December 2012
The Approach is pleased to announce the third solo show by Peter Davies, INVOCATION. The exhibition is comprised of six large-scale black & white paintings that have been laboriously hand rendered from different small-scale repetitive marks or shapes. In comparison to the colourful, painted text-based proclamations on the art world that have dominated Davies’ artistic oeuvre, the new series of monochrome paintings in INVOCATION might seem relatively mute. However closer viewing reveals that despite favouring a more subversive form of communication they still make a great deal of noise.
Whereas Davies’ previous focus was an attempt at laying bare the invisible hierarchies within the world of art, now the daily activity of making work has become his obsession and the paintings themselves effectively byproducts. Taking a stricter approach to the painting process, Davies’ has distilled his practice to its most essential, core elements. His aim is consciously more elusive, casting the work in a colder light than we’ve previously seen. The obsessive mark making and attempts at visual organisation of past works are still present, but the precise and immaculate finish has been abandoned in recognition of the handmade. Geometric arrangements filled with the pleasing irregularities and imperfections rendered by human intervention, the paintings are an appreciation of time, each mark made a tally of hours to completion.
Scale and position of the viewer have also become crucial in our reading of the work. Depending on the perspective from which each painting is examined, at least two different paintings emerge: one depicting gradated subtle imagery that melds together from a distance and the other, revealed as the viewer advances, an intense, industriously made process painting. Each is a system that falls apart and contradicts itself. They are fallible- objective as an idea, but subjective in their realisation. An embodiment of creative dichotomy, they are at once an optically challenging record of painstaking time spent in the studio and holistic representation of a flickering landscape visually humming with a mass of minute parts.
Peter Davies lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include: The Indiscipline of Painting International Abstraction from the 1960’s to Now, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre (2012), Tate St. Ives, UK, (2011); Art, curated by Michael Craig-Martin, Galerie Haas Und Fuchs, Berlin, Germany (2010); The Epoch of Perpetual Happiness, The Approach, London, UK (2010); The Making Of Art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (2009); Idiolects, Brown Gallery, London, UK (2008), The Glass Onion Shop, Riflemaker at the A Foundation, London, UK (2008); Previous John Moores Prizewinners, The Walker, Liverpool, UK (2008); Starstruck: Contemporary Art and the Cult of Celebrity, The New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK (2008); In The Beginning, University Art Gallery, University Of California San Diego, USA (2008); Drawing 2007, The Drawing Room, London, UK (2007); It Was The Best Of Time Outs, It Was The Worst Of Time Outs, Seventeen, London, UK (2007)