This Summer, London has witnessed rather a lot of group painting shows – that all directly address the current nature of painting as a medium. First there was the brilliant June: A Painting Show at Sadie Coles, then Off Kilter: An Age of Oil at Dadiani Fine Art, and now The Fantasy of Representation at Beers. So, what exactly is painting all about now?
According to this latest exhibition, it is somewhere in-between the previous two. There are nods to the surreal nature of painting that was so present in June: A Painting Show, where any kind of representation now is shown up by the nature (and suggested futility) of painting itself. Then there is also a recognition of the slightly garish appearance of much painting in the present day, that was spectacularly present in Off Kilter.
The paintings, in the most part, sit on the brink of formal representation and abstraction – where a perfectly realised face might find itself floating in a bold blue land of semi-forms. There is also a mix of past, established and new artists, mixing the likes of Bacon and Hume with Dominic Shepherd and Lou Ros.
Adam Lee’s work is particularly dark, harlequin-like geometric shapes cloaking gloomy characters whose external lines all drip together, faces merging with clothes, which in turn merge with hands and backgrounds. The representation here is of a mood and a feeling, mirroring the styles of Bacon but rendering them jarringly contemporary with odd sections of vibrant colour.
Also on display are; Dale Adcock, Hurvin Anderson, Scott Anderson, Sverre Bjertnaes, Alison Blickle, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Blake Daniels, Eckart Hahn, Aaron Holz, Jenny Morgan, Justin Ogilvie, Andrew Salgado, Dominic Shepherd and Alexander Tinei.
The Fantasy of Representation is open now at Beers, until 19 September.
