Figure up group exhibition 3 Nov. – 15 Nov. 2020
curated by Euan Gray and Witte Wartena Friday-Sunday 12-5h and on appointment perennial-art@email.com Opening Monday 2nd Nov. 17:00-21:00h
Opening is canceled due to lockdown restrictions in Germany starting Nov. 2nd.
The exhibition locates itself at the nexus between high Art and low
culture and examines the extent to which the language of popular culture
and its subject matter prevails in contemporary figurative drawing today.
The human form has inspired artists for centuries. It can be extremely
intimate or broadly universal and it is central to how we understand
aspects of identity such as gender, sexuality and race. Of the thousands
of figure drawings produced daily around the world, the vast majority
would be described as illustrations. As a term in relation to High Art,
illustration has often been disparaged and implied an inferior quality
in a work often associated with popular culture. However, the artists in
this exhibition in some way utilise illustration and no rigid distinction is made by them between High Art and popular culture.
The drawings are representational, descriptive and the emphasis is on
the figure.
Referencing film, novels, popular music, fashion, cartoons and contemporary forms of social media, the contributors use aspects of the
accessible and familiar language of popular culture to comment on and
engage with a range of personal themes. Their concerns supplant traditional mass cultural narratives into a range of personal statements
about colonial power, racism, homelessness, gender, beauty, and various
other forms of existential questioning.
Marc Brandenburg,
Laura Bruce
Upsidogi Son Sea,
Ali Fitzgerald
Andrew Gilbert
Euan Gray
Marie Harnett
Helena Hernandez
Paul McDevitt
David Shrigley
Sandra Vásquez de la Horra
Witte Wartena