Josh Lilley presents Heavy is the Mountain, a new solo exhibition by British painter Ryan Mosley (b. 1980, Chesterfield, UK) opening this Thursday 16th January.
Exploring Mosley’s distinctive narrative style and wry application of art historical reference, this suite of vibrant, expansive paintings augments the artist’s ornate cast of long running characters with compelling new additions. Musicians and troubadours meet cowboys and mountaineers, grape pickers and pearl divers, ranging from the bourgeois to the blue collar, the naive wanderer to the scheming gambler. They inhabit a world of myth and fable, where each of their entangled tales extend far beyond the confines of the frame, out into murky pasts and distant lands.
Mosley’s world building traverses social and magical realism, weaving Hogarth with Doig, Manet and Picabia, implying the presence of class dynamics amidst a dreamlike environment with no fixed history or geography. These tall tales and romanticised yarns nod to Mosley’s working class roots and upbringing in the north of England. Stories of near-forgotten relatives and eccentric forebears merge into local legend and historical tradition, manifested in lively scenes that conjure a sense of curious familiarity and deep empathy.
Sound and colour work in harmony within Mosley’s paintings and there is often bustling activity beyond the confines of each composition, be it manmade or of the landscape itself. We see the presence of celebration and commemoration, carnival and ritual, the rumble and hiss of volcanoes, the lapping of waves and swaying of trees. His palette is the warm light of a low sun at daybreak or day’s end, emphasising work to do or already done, a moment of reprieve or a breath being taken.
The rendering of Mosley’s figures, often depicted in solitary communion or colluding pairs embody the technical ability of his application, summoned without study or sitting subject. They are as much a product of his imagination as his landscapes and wear the embedded history of their setting, distinctive and full of character. Mosley drafts and redrafts their point of balance within the timbre and tone of each setting, until they are rendered in a suitable pose of becoming, hinting at an enigmatic yet beguiling narrative continuum that extends from one painting to the next.
Ryan Mosley, Heavy is the Mountain, 17th January – 22nd February 2025 Josh Lilley
Private view 6PM-8PM, 16th January
About the artist
Ryan Mosley (b. 1980, Chesterfield, UK) has been represented by Josh Lilley since 2020, 11 years after his appearance in the gallery’s inaugural show and a decade in which he presented multiple solo exhibitions at Alison Jacques, London; Tim Van Laere, Antwerp; and EIGEN + ART, Berlin and Leipzig. He participated in the important figurative painting survey Radical Figures at the Whitechapel Gallery in Spring 2020. Mosley lives and works in Sheffield.
