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‘You’re French Gendarmes with Me’ at Hannah Barry Gallery Art Opening Wednesday 10th April 2013

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Photo Nathan Cash Davidson by Jo Tovey Frost

April 11th – May 8th Hannah Barry Gallery, 110 New Bond St www.hannahbarry.com

Your’e French Gendarmes with Me, an exhibition of Nathan Cash Davidson’s new drawings.

The artist has previously used preparatory drawings as a step in the process of composing his paintings, but these are the first to be conceived of as entirely independent works. Each of these drawings is described on board, the physical weight and texture of which accentuates the vibrancy of Cash Davidson’s line, typified by an inherent appreciation of volume and form expressed through subtle variations in the pressure applied to each stroke.

These drawings, in common with all of Cash Davidson’s works, are indebted to the Old Masters. The naked woman in Odd Week Wig You and a Part Dresser derives from Michelangelo’s Night, which flanks the Tomb of Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence. The head and shoulders portrait (Rum Lick Like Why? Together You and I) carries shades of Caravaggio’s famous rendition of the severed head of Goliath, held at arm’s length by David. The model is in fact a housemate to the artist.

The explicit religiosity of the above-mentioned works also appeals to the artist, and while their hallucinatory combination of images legislates against their interpretation as parables or allegories, they do nonetheless achieve a similarly reverent atmosphere through their representation of the architecture of churches, chapels, vaults, tabernacles and reliefs.

If Cash Davidson’s influences are eclectic then his appropriation and recycling of symbols and motifs borders on the oneiric. They Steep Meadow Twin or Double reuses the image of a swan taking flight that first appeared in the 2010 painting You’re far from dead a wrong’un having a laugh, with new roles and contexts for the two spectral figures that featured in the painting. The artist explains that the shade and character of the graphite on board lent the figures the attitude of “hunted ghosts”.

Beautiful works in their own right, these drawings provide a unique insight into the work and thought of the artist and a crucial link to his work as a painter.

www.hannahbarry.com

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