SUPERUNKNOWN at Edel Assanti

Superunknown
Curated by Andy Wicks & David Northedge

Artists
David Small, Ed Payne, Gordon Cheung, Graham McNamara, James Roper, Matthew Atkinson, Michael Ashcroft, Rob Sherwood, Rosalie Wiesner, Sayshun Jay.

Private View
Wednesday 6th October 7 - 9pm

Exhibition Dates
Thursday 7th October - Saturday 13th November

Gallery Hours
Wednesday - Saturday 12pm - 6pm or by appointment

Address - Edel Assanti, 276 Vauxhall Bridge Road, Victoria, London, SW1V 1BB


Edel Assanti is proud to present Superunknown, an exhibition curated by Andy Wicks and David Northedge.

Literature and Hollywood have long been creating dark and empty visions of near future societies in decline. In the present day, materials addressing this subject matter have once again found their way onto reading lists and cinema screens, forming a focal point for contemporary popular culture.

Projections of our universal future are often delivered in cautionary tones and serve as warning of how to avoid the total decimation of society. Notional futures of grim decaying interiors and bleak grey landscapes populated by savage inhabitants are the cultural benchmark for a morbid moribund world limping towards apocalypse.

Superunknown is a group show of twelve artists who produce work that addresses a future full of dreams, illusions and fantasies, celebrating the neglected virtues of the glossy, lurid and bizarre. The combined works on show articulate a hallucinatory collective vision of a future in which illicit vices serve as the connective tissues for a population wheeling recklessly onwards with a stoic apathy toward redemption and self-preservation.

This group show is formed predominately of painters whose work share a common aesthetic of semi abstraction and contemporary landscape. The exhibition also features photography, video, sculpture and installation based works.

http://edelassanti.com/exhibitiondetails.php?ID=90

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=147677701934841

Caged Bird Sings

Caged Bird Sings (group show): 15th - 20th April

Crypt Gallery
Saint Pancras Church
Euston Road
London
NW1 2BA

Bare/not Projects present Caged Bird Sings, an exhibition in the atmospheric Crypt Gallery in St Pancras.

We have fifteen artists participating: James Roper, Klarita Pandolfi, Dorothy Yoon, Jo Young, Paul Dawes, Daisy McMullan, Luigi Menichelli, Taciana Coimbra, Antonio Pagani, Tom Lovelace, Reme Campos, Brixton Punk (Andrew Graves Johnston), Stella O and Kika Nicolela

Our opening night is on 15th April, there will be free drinks and a DJ in the Crypt.

For more info visit: barenot.wordpress.com

www.cryptgallery.org.uk

My art reviewed in Art Review

Part of the London art reviews marathon '4 critics, 7 days, 100 reviews'

www.artreview.com

London Art Fair 2009

FORSTER will have two new drawings at the London Art Fair 2009 - Business Design Centre, Islington - 14th - 18th January 2009. Stand G45 on the balcony level (at the rear, on the right)

'Into the Fold' at Forster

Into the Fold (solo show): 7 November - 20 December 2008

FORSTER
1 Chapel Place
Rivington Street
London
EC2A 3DQ

+44 (0)20 7739 7572
info@forstergallery.com

press release:

FORSTER is proud to present James Roper’s forthcoming solo show, ‘Into The Fold’, a much anticipated collection of stunning new paintings and a site-specific installation in his first exhibition at the gallery.

Roper draws upon his own library of photographs as a foundation for his striking paintings, whilst also obsessively trawling and utilizing a plethora of visual material found on the internet, including fashion, animation, and advertising. Each of the artist’s paintings result from his re-digestion and translation of these collected pictorial tools, with his superior use of paint.

‘I predominantly choose images and try to create forms which I feel register a visual 'peak shift', a term given to the phenomena of 'neurological attraction' that appears in both humans and animals to an extreme characterization of an object.’ – James Roper

This ‘peakshift’ is core to the artists work. Present within advertising, Hollywood blockbusters, haute couture fashion, as well as in extreme forms of body exaggeration such as bodybuilding and pornography, the artist extracts the key element of the image, that causes such heightened visual excitement. By isolating ‘peakshift’ images and merging them through collage, the intention is to intensify the visual triggers so that they form a sort of neurological hyperactivity.

In addition to contemporary source material, James Roper’s work has been heavily influenced by Catholic imagery from the Baroque period and he specifically sites Bernini - the exaggerated depiction of texture, flesh and folds in robes and cloth as key source of inspiration.

"I see the fold of things through the dust they stir up, and whose folds I cast aside. I do not see into God, but I do see into the folds." Deleuze – The Fold

The excessive use of pleats in the artists work surround the viewer as if they are housed within this lavish world of colour and texture. They themselves are engulfed by these surfaces and become part of the folds that are beyond the canvas but are indeed hinted at. The sublime titles of the paintings point towards an otherworldly suggestion of infinity or the constant shift of perception and understanding of space, time and quantity. We have to ask what is it that we are looking for – an answer, solution, reason or cause? Surely the best option is to enjoy this visual feast laid before us, and submerge ourselves into the fold?

Since completing his BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2005 James Roper has exhibited widely across the UK and has been featured in such publications as Belio Magazine and Dazed and Confused. Roper is currently art directing a short film he co-wrote that won funding from NorthWest Vision and Media as part of their Virgin Shorts 2008.
For further information and images please contact Suzanne at the gallery on +44 (0)20 7739 7572 or Suzanne@forstergallery.com