Stuart Semple Fated to pretend
Roni Stretch Madison Titanium White
Roni Stretch Lila buff Titanium
Antoinette Wysocki Warm Impermanence
Antoinette Wysocki Memore Vivere
7th- 16th March 2013 Mead Carney Fine Art 45 Dover Street London, W1S 4FF www.robertamoore.co.uk
Private View: Wednesday 6th March 6- 8.30pm
Artists: Stuart Semple, Roni Stretch & Antoinette Wysocki
Celebrated British artist and curator, Stuart Semple, exhibits alongside two ground- breaking US painters, Roni Stretch and Antoinette Wysocki; both showing work in London for the first time.
Roberta Moore Contemporary is to present this group show, unifying three distinctive styles of painting and print technique; merging cultural influences from the UK and US.
“I’m excited to see Roni Stretch and Antoinette Wysocki’s work in the flesh, both are truly compelling painters so I’m thrilled to be involved.”
Stuart Semple
Roni Stretch presents a series of eloquent and stylistic portraits and figurative paintings, alongside selected works from the Roma Series, in this first UK showing. Stretch has paintings held in public collections in the US and Europe and over 200 works in private collections worldwide. The artist’s unique interpretation and exquisite style has captured the attention of myriad public figures, leading to portraiture commissions by such names as actor Robert Downey Jr. and director and producer Oliver Stone. For Stretch, each portrait is a lesson in contradictions, photo-realism and abstraction; reality and altered states.
“Portraiture, by definition, is the recording of an individual’s appearance and personality;
I don’t want to do that. The face for me is a vehicle or entrance into the work. I am more interested in the reuniting of the non-objective and the objective and I look for the tension between the two.”
Roni Stretch
Stretch has pioneered the Dichromatic Process; oil paintings are meticulously created by executing a layering process where two colours are alternately applied and built-up over a series of weeks. The image is not so much painted over as optically embedded within the multiple layers of the alternating colours. The subjects play against a sharply lined border intended to ground each painting in the physical. In the Roma Series his works take a different direction, stripping back the development process to the forgotten beginning, to the simplicity of idea.
This is the first UK showing of Fated To Pretend, one of only a handful of large-scale paintings made by Stuart Semple in recent years. Exhibited originally in Hong Kong, it received controversial reactions.
Recently, Semple’s paintings have explored the moment in childhood where innocence turns to aggression. Fated to Pretend seeks to understand how, through play, children mimic their surroundings, whether a stick becomes a magic wand–oragun.
A theme that is poignant at a time when we are confronted with rioting, protests and civil unrest. The gap between those who fit in and those that don’t, the haves and have nots is a widening chasm and a turbulent one. In this painting the turbulence is portrayed through the physical application of paint.
Alongside Fated to Pretend – Semple will present a series of print works which continue the dialogue with materials, iconography and fabrication. Previously focussed upon cultural icons – Debbie Harry and Nicki Minaj – Semple now introduces images of David Bowie to the series – which he presents, here, for the first time.
Antoinette Wysocki, a native New Yorker, brings her most recent series of works to London, highlighting her extraordinary form of expressionist painting with works like: Warm Impermanence and DisOriental. Wysocki has exhibited widely in galleries in San Francisco, New York, Sacramento, New Mexico and Hong Kong.
This series of paintings reflects on the Buddhist’s beliefs of ‘Impermanence’ where nothing on this earth is ever free. Imagery of a skull and the lotus can be found throughout; repetitive shapes flow, recalling textiles and urban landscapes, with a nod to the elaborate tradition of the rambling English garden. The pieces are a story, identified through symbol and forms: a tiny bird, a diary of text, a secret, a dialogue; within the works a reassurance to the participant, a phrase simply summarised: ‘OK to Wish Here’. A response, also, to London’s painted grey skies; images investigate the most saturated colours, softening their existence through the interplay of brush stroke and detail of form. Controlled flat black lines give way to drips from action painting, making for movement in each piece.
Roberta Moore Contemporary
Roberta Moore Contemporary was established in 2007 and specialises in showcasing cutting-edge and emerging British and international contemporary artists, and presents an annual programme of ‘pop up’ exhibitions in unique and unusual spaces throughout London and the UK. Roberta Moore Contemporary is also a regular exhibitor at contemporary art fairs and London galleries.
