BEERS London: Works on Paper 2018
Curator and organiser of annual works on paper group exhibition Sara Anstis | Matthew John Atkinson | Chris Bogia | Gord Bond | Laura Bruce Christian Clayton | Miles Debas | Sainer Etam | Robert Fry | Florence Hutchings | Henning Kles | Antone Könst Caroline Larsen | Holly Mills | Antonia Showering | Eleanor Swordy | Fabian Treiber
After last year's (second annual) paper show, in which more than 50 artists were invited to present works on paper, the premise for this year's exhibition is significantly scaled back: 17 artists were invited to submit a single work on paper. Further, the brief was relatively simple: artists were allowed to do whatever they wanted, provided that this was completed on the standard paper size of 76x55cm. The resulting works span a spectrum of media, subject matter, and styles.
A few artists, such as Miles Debas, Holly Mills, and Antonia Showering, have previously shown in the paper show; the majority of artists will be making their debut both in the paper show and at the gallery, including Chris Bogia, Christian Clayton, Sainer Etam, Caroline Larsen, Antone Könst, Eleanor Swordy, Fabian Treiber, and Sara Anstis. Beers welcomes Robert Fry (who previously showed with the gallery in 2013), and Matthew John Atkinson, who will both be presenting solo exhibitions with the gallery in 2019; and Gord Bond, who will be taking part in the gallery's presentation for Zona Maco Art Fair.
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Sara Anstis
Sara Anstis’ distinct figures are depicted in a variety of both benign and fantastical situations. Whilst previous works have taken inspiration from wilderness survival courses and survival television programs, recent offerings have more erotic undertones, with her ‘primarily female’ characters nonchalantly going about their business fully nude, with bodies similar in forms to Niki de Saint Phalle’s Nanas. Their colours are, however, much more subdued, with Anstis employing the use of soft pastel on paper to give the works a scratchy, hazy quality.
SARA ANSTIS [b. 1991, Stockholm, Sweden] lives and works in London, UK. Selected exhibitions include: ‘Drill Street’, Digitaliseum, Malmö, Sweden (2018); ‘A place forgotten by many’, Gothenburg Konsthall reading room, (2017); ‘Konstakademien grant recipients' exhibition’, Galleri Väst, Ateljén och Galleri Öst, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm (2017); ‘Untitled and anonymous’, Galleri Monitor, Gothenburg (solo) (2015); and ‘Ways of Drawing’, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Oslo, Norway (2015).
Matthew John Atkinson
Often fusing elements of both pop and gothic art, Matthew Atkinson’s depictions of eerie hinterlands are both sinister and darkly comical. With inspiration and subject matter stemming from a number of disparate sources – religion, childhood, the British landscape, death, and memory – Atkinson aims to remind the viewer of their own vulnerabilities. By utilising techniques from abstract and representational art, paintings are created which seem to straddle multiple worlds. Infantile motifs such as Disney’s Pinocchio and a brightly coloured playhouse are shrouded and degraded as if timeworn – as if they were lifted from their own worlds and placed into underworlds which slowly consume them. Atkinson deftly furthers this by incorporating luminescent glazes and new media layers onto his work, opening up the otherwise singular dimensionality of the works to new layers of meaning.
MATTHEW ATKINSON (b. 1985, Kent, England) lives and works in Gravesend, UK. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art Painting from Loughborough University in 2007. Solo exhibitions include: 'PARA', NAM Project, Milan, Italy (2018); Superior Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2017); 'Albanese Arte', Via XX Settembre, Italy (2014); and 'PARALAND', NAM Project, Milan, Italy (2013). Group exhibitions include: 'ARTIST OF THE DAY', Flowers Gallery, London (2013); 'At Home Salon', Marcelle Joseph Project, Ascot, UK (2012); 'Exposition de Groupe', Galerie d’YS, Brussels, Belgium (2011); 'SUPERUNKNOWN', Edel Assanti, London, UK (2010); and 'Bright Lights of London Painting', Resy Muijsers Contemporary Art, Tolburg, Netherlands (2010).
Chris Bogia
Chris Bogia’s plywood sculptures rely on balance and the perfect geometricity of objects to stand, the steadfastness of wood being at odds with their seeming fragility. His works on paper, however, are devoid of this of the need to stand freely. By seeing the sculptures depicted in a two-dimensional form, we are instead invited to admire the works for their decorative nature–the shapes, the colours, the compositions. Working on paper allows Bogia to create works that may be impossible to physically realise due to physical limits.
CHRIS BOGIA [b. 1977, Delaware, USA] lives and works in Queens, New York. Selected solo exhibitions include ‘Plants Vs Zombies’, Tim’s Used Books, Provincetown, MA (2015); and ‘Chris Bogia’, Lump Gallery, Releigh, NC (2014). Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Circus of Books’, West Hollywood, CA (2016); ‘Queer Threads’, Decker Gallery MICA, Baltimore (2015); ‘Fiber Optics’, Minus Space, NYC (2015); ‘The Nothing That Is’, Contemporary Arts Museum, Raleigh, NC (2015); and ‘The Church of Man Love’, Box 13, Houston, TX (2014).
Gord Bond
Gord Bond’s work stems from a fascination with the human bodily form – particularly the face. Influenced by the likes of Philip Guston, whose cartoonish representations of lugubrious, idiosyncratic characters and body parts were created as a direct response against the work of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock working at the time. Like Guston’s figures, Bond’s characters are somewhat reductive yet highly expressive and, despite bright orange noses, purple cheeks, blue eyebrows and red lips, manage not to look clownish or overly comical. Instead, they are depicted in loose narratives with a delicate sense of play. An artist focussed on the materiality of paint, Bond allows mistakes and bad decisions to become part of the fabric of his work; vestiges of past forms sit like bruises below the surface, pushing to break through.
GORD BOND (b. 1989, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Originally studying Science at McMaster University, he switched majors and subsequently graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 2012, then with a Masters of Fine Arts from York University in 2014. Solo exhibitions include: 'Almost Human Nature', Carnegia Gallery, Dundas, Canada (2017); 'What Are We Waiting For?', Oswald Gallery, Hamilton, Canada (2016); 'Kin or Close Enough', McMaster’s Fitzhenry Atrium, Hamilton, Canada (2016); and 'Trying Not to Die', AWOL Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2014). Group exhibitions include: 'The Crowd', Maiden LA Public Installation, Los Angeles, USA (2017); 'One Horse Town', Prop Haus, Hamilton, Canada (2017); 'Hot Properties', Casino Artspace, Hamilton, Canada (2017); and 'Worked Over', Oswald Gallery, Hamilton, Canada (2017).
Laura Bruce
Laura Bruce works primarily as a painter, sculptor and video artist, and has more recently begun to explore the possibilities and limitations of drawing. The bold, graphic style she uses to depict realistic scenes imbues each piece with a sense of transition between the real world and a realm of uncanniness. Verging on abstraction, this merging of two worlds seeks to remind us of planes beyond our comprehension, and of the spaces between reality and myth. In a more worldly sense, her drawings and paintings are particularly focussed on exploring the tangible nature of a mark on a surface; the way graphite scratches paper and coloured pencils interact with black and white laser prints.
LAURA BRUCE [b. 1959, New Jersey] graduating with an MFA in sculpture from The Slade School of Fine Art, London, and is now a lecturer in drawing at the Akademie der Malerei Berlin. Selected solo shows include: ‘To Kiss or Kill’, Galerie Rompone, Cologne, Germany (2018); ‘Love and Other Machines’, New Art Projects, London, UK (2015); ‘Augenwiede’, Vattenfall Foundation, Berlin, Germany (2011); and ‘Night Twist’, Delikatessenhaus, Leipzig, Germany, (2007). Group Exhibitions include: ‘Stadt-Land-Fluss’, Museum Boppard, Germany (2018); ‘Mind the Gap’, Rohkunstbau, Schloss Liberose, Germany (2018); and ‘Wir nennen es Arbeit’, Opera Scelte, Turin, Italy (2017). She has lived and worked in Berlin since 1990.
Christian Clayton
For 20 years—from 1996 to 2016, Christian Clayton and brother Rob formed ‘Clayton Brothers’, an artistic duo whose output can be found in countless museums, foundations and private collections. Since focussing on his solo output, Christian Clayton’s works have purposely become rawer, with less of a ‘produced’ finish; his works on paper, in particular, feel more immediate, with particular consideration placed on the act of mark-making—an almost doodle-like quality.
CHRISTIAN CLAYTON [b. 1967 Denver, CO, USA] graduated with a BFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA, in 1991. Selected solo exhibitions (including as a part of ‘Clayton Brothers’ with Rob Clayton) include: ‘Open to the Public’, Mark Moore Gallery, LA (2014); ‘I’m OK’, Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2013); and ‘Wishy Washy’, Texas Contemporary Art Fair, Houston, TX (2013). Group Exhibitions include: ‘Big’, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin (2017); ‘East Looking West’, Heron Arts, California (2017); ‘Melted City 4 @ RISD’, ISB Gallery, Rhode Island (2017); and Figurative Feature, 101 Exhibit Gallery, California (2017). Clayton lives and works in Pasadena, California.
Miles Debas
Miles Debas is a set designer, prop stylist and artist based in New York. Debas makes paintings with rich surfaces and surprising imagery taking inspiration from somewhat unconventional moments of people and places. Debas weaves together elements of Cubism and Fauvism with a more graphic, contemporary handling of space that results in playfully idiosyncratic paintings that display a clear admiration for the great Modern painters.
MILES DEBAS [b. 1985, Paris, France] graduated from Skidmore College and will complete his MFA in painting at Hunter College, NY, in 2019. Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Flat Earthers’, Over Under Room, NY (2018); ‘Interstitial’, 205 Hudson Gallery, NY (2018); ‘Velvet Ropes’, David Risley Gallery Copenhagen, Denmark (2018); and ‘Paper Cuts’, Kristian Day Gallery, London, UK. Debas currently lives and works in New York City.
Sainer Etam
Sainer’s works – both painted and drawn – skirt between the graphic and the hypperrealistic. Indeed, he has found success designing record covers and graphical prints, as well as painting large murals that scale the walls of entire buildings. His works are known for their elements of whimsy that border on the fantastical. Primarily concerned with depicting the human form, his characters seem aware but unphased by their audience, as if we were watching their lives through a hazed window.
SAINER [b. 1988, Lodz, Poland] lives and works in Gdynia, Poland. He is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. Selected exhibitions include: ‘Galimations’, Thinkspace Gallery, Los Angeles (2015); ‘LA ART SHOW’, Thinkspace Gallery, Los Angeles (2015); ‘Bedtime Stories’, Varsi Gallery, Rome, Italy (2014); ‘Ugly Heroes’, Montana Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (2014); and ‘Neverland’, Intinerance Gallery, Paris, France (2013).
Robert Fry
Robert Fry typically executes works in a flattened perspective in which a human figure is reduced to its bare elements. Fry is only concerned in mapping the body in a referential sense and his figures are stripped of any sense of naturalism. In obscuring his figures, he references a blocking of information and identity to give way to psychological insinuations. These elements serve a greater conceptual mythology, in that the manipulated physical entities suggest a complexity of meaning beyond what is immediately evident. In using expressionism and abstraction, he finds a new language of representation.
ROBERT FRY (b. 1980 London), graduated with a BA Hons Fine Art from Oxford Brooks University in 2002. Solo exhibitions include: Robert Fry and Casey McKee: 'Unpacking Ego', Space K, South Korea, 'Robert Fry and Tina Schwarz', Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin (2017); 'Partners', Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin (2015) and VOLTA NY (2015). Group exhibitions include: 'Berlin Calling', Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin (2018); '75 Works on Paper', BEERS London (2017); 'The Nude in the XX and XXI Century', Sotheby's SI2, London, England (2015) and '100 Painters of Tomorrow', One Art Space, New York (2014).
Florence Hutchings
Florence Hutchings’ still lifes are classical in their subject matter; this can be expected from works with titles such as ‘A Vase of Flowers in front of a Bookcase’, ‘Two Vases on the Shelf’, and ‘Objects on a Dresser’. Their execution, however, is much more surprising—formed from seemingly haphazard compositions of shapes, their forms would disappear if a single element was removed. Her claim to be as interested in the space around an object as the object itself is immediately apparent, with the backgrounds of her works often utilising the same geometries as the subject.
FLORENCE HUTCHINGS [b. 1996, Kent, UK] lives and works in London, UK. Selected exhibitions include: ‘Juice’ 5th Base Gallery, London (2018); ‘Mud’, Doomed Gallery, London (2017); ‘Do I Beg this Slender Inch’, The Chopping Block Gallery, London (2017); ‘All’s Well’, The Crypt Gallery, London (2017); and ‘Magical Offspring’, The Geddes Gallery, London, (2016).
Henning Kles
Henning Kles’ working progress is one of perpetual evolution; he begins each fresh surface without a plan or goal, building upon layers of his subdued pastel colour palette until semblances of forms begin to appear: faces, profiles, heads. Constructed from myriad fluid shapes, they play on our sense of apophenia to deduce figures, harking toward classical painters like Giuseppe Arcimboldo—albeit with a decidedly more playful (quasi-Cubist) aesthetic.
HENNING KLES [b. 1970, Hamburg, Germany) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Selected exhibitions include: ‘Wendezeiten’, CCA Andratx, Spain (2016); ‘Your Light is my Darkness (Part III), Gerhard Hofland, Amsterdam (2016); and ‘Globetrotter’, Essl Museum, Flosterneuburg, Australia.
Antone Könst
Antone Könst is interested in creating art that can be viewed with multiple meanings as a tool for agency. This is very much reflected in his choice of cliched subject matter in paintings. I his practice, Könst takes the supposition of meaning in figurative form and empty it, or, from another perspective, overload it with aesthetic and material significance.
ANTONE KÖNST (b. 1987 New Haven, CT) graduated with an M.F.A from Yale School of Art in 2014. Selected solo exhibitions include: 'Dawn and Other Spheres', Artist Curated Projects, LA (2018); 'Second Nature', Radical Abacus, Santa Fe (2017) and 'March, Meander', Antone Könst & Bridget Mullen, Hometown Gallery, Brooklyn (2017). Selected goup exhibitions include: 'Lucky Draw', Sculpture Centre, Queens, NY (2018); 'The Ashtray Show', Fisher Parrish, Brooklyn, New York (2018) and 'UNTITLED ART FAIR MIAMI BEACH', Zieher Smith, Miami (2017). Könst currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Caroline Larsen
Upon first glance, Caroline Larsen’s paintings may be mistaken as embroidery or beadwork. In fact, the textural, three-dimensional effect is created by piping oil paint directly onto the surface and sometimes weaving strips of dried paint to create mosaic-like imagery. The result is not only tactile, but allows for a play with light through the reflections cast on the surface, giving the quality of a glossy print.
CAROLINE LARSEN lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Intitute, Brooklyn, USA, in 2015. Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘Flower Frenzy’, Andrew Rafacz, Chicago, Illinois (2018); ‘Romance on the Islands’, Residency Show, Dio Horia, Mykonos, Greece, (2018); and ‘Mountain Painting’, General Hardware Contemporary, Toronto, Canada (2018). Selected group shows include: ‘The Beyond, Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Artists’, Crystal BridgesMuseum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (2018); ‘Material’, Cob Gallery, London, England (2018); and ‘Shapeshifter’, Guerrero Gallery, San Fransisco, California (2018).
Holly Mills
Holly Mills began her career as an illustrator and this interest in narrative and fiction continues to heavily influence her ever-evolving work. Much of Mills’s work can be seen as a visceral reaction to text that is not so much concerned with re-telling a story but more so in creating an emotive, atmospheric snap shot of a scene. Using these fragments of narrative, Mills invites the viewer to speculate her interpretation of the scene. The process of making - an experimental process of trial and error is an integral part of Mills’s mixed media works. Working across painting, printmaking, illustration and textiles, Mills draws influence from contemporary fiction, remembered journeys and imagined destinations. With a childlike naivety and pervading sense of unease: inspiration from the drudgery of modern day life starkly contrasts with vivid paintings of foliage and pattern. Holly’s eclectic practise intends to evoke mood and atmosphere through the use of bold layered colours and intense scratched lines. Recurring imagery of long limbed figures, blurred in movement create an almost dream like visual language.
Holly Mills [b. 1990, London] currently lives and works in London. She graduated from Camberwell College of Arts with a BA in Illustration in 2012, the same year she won the V&A student illustrator of the year award. Selected exhibitions include 35 Works on Paper and Contemporary Visions VII (Beers, London); Jungle Book Club (Book Club, London); Secret 7” (Sonos Studios, London) Pick Me Up (Somerset House, London) and the V&A Illustration Awards (Victoria & Albert Museum, London).
Antonia Showering
Antonia Showering is a rising star of UK painting, having recently found success as a part of the acclaimed Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition. Her works are almost always figurative, depicting solemn figures with simple (yet highly expressionistic) faces. Her colour choices are muted to the extent that the figures seem to blend into their backgrounds—they become ghostly, almost translucent, giving a haunting sense of unease.
ANTONIA SHOWERING [b. 1991, London, UK] graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art in 2018. Selected exhibitions include: ‘Kennedy Doig & Showering’, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles, (2018); ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries’, John Lennon Art and Design Building’, Liverpool (2018); ‘New ‘Bad’ Painting’, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen (2018); ‘The present is already gone’, Chalton Gallery, London (2018); and ‘Picnic’, Subsidiary Projects, London (2018).
Eleanor Swordy
Drawing from collective narrative and imagination, Eleanor Swordy’s paintings reveal the experience of being awake, both at once in awe of the natural world, while situated in a sociopolitical horror. Initially drawing in the viewer with saturated colours and seductive shapes, these works reflect a more ominous truth. The tactility of varied, expressive, often sculptural mark making exaggerates the blurred boundary between figuration and abstraction.
Eleanor Swordy (b. 1987, Paris, France) received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2010. Solo exhibitions include: 'Is This Real', Moskowitz Bayse, Los Angeles (2018) and 'Home Invader', Full Haus, Los Angeles (2017). Group exhibitions include: 'Another History', Thierry Goldberg, New York (2018); 'Finger Food', The Hand, New York (2016) and 'Enlarged Fern', Moskowitz Bayse, Los Angeles (2016). She lives and works in New York.
Fabian Treiber
Fabian Treiber’s works depict things we see every day in impromptu still lifes—shoes, bananas, bottles, vases, cupboards, mirrors, lamps. Piled atop one another in a collage-like fashion, his works appear super flat. The viewer can see both the front and top of a chest of drawers; the sides of lampshades are extended ever so slightly too wide along their profile. The resulting images move beyond their quotidian subject matter into a realm where the forms of objects are slightly awkward and awry—a fact compounded by the bright, distinct colour palette.
FABIAN TREIBER [b. 1986, Ludwigsburg, Germany) lives and works in Stuttgart, Germany. Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘Candle, Candle’, Kunstverein Sebastianskepelle e.V, (2018); ‘Autogrill’, Strzelski Galerie, Stuttgart, (2018); and ‘body doesn’t know’, Galeries Mark Muller, Zurich, Switzerland (2017). Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Open House’, Alte Munze, Berlin, (2018); ‘the art of living’, Arts Projects Australia, Melbourne (2018); and ‘on the home front’, Gallery KANT, Copenhagen, Denmark (2018).
