Cristea Roberts Gallery presents Soft Knock, a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Clare Woods. Woods utilises the genre of still life and the classical trope of memento mori to explore the vulnerability of life, its fragile boundaries and co-existing tensions.
In a departure from earlier work exploring the human body, Woods’ new collages and prints, from cut flowers to empty stoneware jugs, are seen alongside works depicting loaded skies. Hovering between figuration and abstraction, the works in Soft Knock present us with both the familiar and the uncanny, the gentle and the sinister.
Also on show is Still Live, a group show co-curated by Clare Woods.
Still Live features prints and editions tracing one of the most time-honoured pictorial genres in art history over six decades. Examples of rare and important prints of the twentieth century include a lithographic flower-piece by Georges Braque (1882-1963) and a still life scene illuminated under a lampshade at night by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), considered a masterpiece in colour linocut printing.
In later works by Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004), Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005), and Michael Craig-Martin (b. 1941), each artist revisits the historical tradition of still life, drawing subject matter and sometimes forms and colours from the masters of modern art, including Picasso, Braque, Matisse, and Warhol.
In contrast, Jim Dine’s (b. 1935) depictions of flowers and plants, which have long been an enduring theme in his work, are drawn directly from nature. Taking inspiration from the lush gardens and vegetation of his surroundings, Dine’s botanical works appear in different stages of bloom and growth. A recent triptych bursts with a colourful variety of flowers, plants, fruit and vegetables.
A second triptych made by Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) between 1973 and 1975 depicts three ‘Flower-pieces’, each in a specific print medium; etching, collotype and lithography. Hamilton, who explored and demonstrated the processes of digital printing and its relationship to photography in his prints, made these works not from life, but from three-dimensional postcards.
Gordon Cheung (b. 1975) also explores the creative potential of digital technologies, using a computer algorithm to ‘glitch’ images of Dutch seventeenth-century still life paintings sourced from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Cheung distorts the depicted still life so that it appears to melt down before our eyes.
Cornelia Parker (b. 1956) who is fascinated by the physical properties and the histories of objects, uses printmaking to breathe new life into found objects. The artist depicts a row of empty glass medicine bottles and, for a corresponding print, she captures the shadows of the labels by turning the bottles over. Parker re-animates the glassware, creating still lifes that are mysterious and spectral.
| Duration | 08 March 2024 - 27 April 2024 |
| Times | Tuesday - Friday: 11am - 5.30pm Saturday: 11am - 2pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Cristea Roberts Gallery |
| Address | 43 Pall Mall, London, SW1Y 5JG |
| Contact | 2074391866 / info@alancristea.com / www.alancristea.com |