PALE FIRES:
Annice Fell, H.E. Morris, and
Tianyue Zhong
15 - 20 October 2024
17 rue Chapon, Paris, France
Opening: 14 October, 6 - 8pm
The moon’s an arrant thief and her pale fire she snatches from the sun.
– William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act IV (1606)
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We are delighted to announce the gallery’s first exhibition in Paris, PALE FIRES, which opens at 17 rue des Chapon in the Marais on 15th October, coinciding with Art Basel and the Paris Internationale. The display consists of major new works by LBF’s three represented artists – Annice Fell, H. E. Morris, and Tianyue Zhong – who are each among the most dynamic of contemporary painters working within an abstract vocabulary today. The exhibition’s title is taken from Shakespeare’s ‘problem play’ Timon of Athens, and refers to the ways in which artists, perhaps like Timon’s moon, scavenge sources and material from the natural world all the while mediating the painting’s surface between absence and presence, concealment and revelation.
Fell (b. 1997, lives and works in London, UK), who is represented by seven oil and pastel works (five on canvas, two on paper), is the recipient of the prestigious Betty Malcolm Prize and the Richard Ford Award. Her spring 2024 exhibition at LBF, entitled Balancing Act, was a major success. By drawing on techniques developed by the surrealists, Fell accesses material from the unconscious mind as part of her creative process. She incorporates compositional approaches of psychic automatism and decalcomania, in which paint is spread onto a surface and, while still wet, covered with another material (such as paper, glass, or aluminium foil) which, when removed, reveals a pattern that can be embellished upon. In part, the paintings on show resemble abstracted landscapes, with vaulted horizon lines and juxtaposing pastel pigments. Fell responds to the printed marks that, once printed, have no legibility to her and thus allow her to ‘delve into the subconscious and not to have any inhibitions.’ Seeking out a greater degree of weather and atmosphere in these paintings, Fell remains concerned with the capacity of painting to examine the shape and semblance of human subjectivity in the world, and describes her finished works as ‘snapshots’ or ‘freeze frames’ of experience.
Morris (b. 1989, lives and works in London, UK) is a major new talent in contemporary painting, whose works recall the tactility of Antoni Tàpies and the expressivity of Perle Fine. By imagining her work as encountered in medias res, or in the middle of things, as in the scene of a play, Morris has a remarkable capacity to capture something of the transience of finite life using an innovative arsenal of materials. While based in east London, Morris is a doctoral candidate at Newcastle University, and holds a Masters in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths. By all accounts, Morris is an intellectual painter who infuses philosophical and existential ideas into her process-driven work. By using unforgiving materials like linen and fabric, which foreclose the artist’s ability to go back over, remedy or modify previous interventions, as is possible in most canvas paintings, Morris’ work returns the making of painting as an arena in which the artist acts.
Zhong (b. 1994, lives and works in Los Angeles, California) enlivens the tradition of mid-century gestural abstraction, a mode of expressive art-making that defines the painting as an event as much as an object. After being captivated by the topographies of Shangri-La in Yunnan and Shigatse in Tibet, which the artist visited in early 2024 and captured on camera, Zhong made a series of collages and drawings which responded to what she describes as a transcendent ‘everpresentness’, or total attention to one’s surroundings. As Zhong transitioned onto a larger and steadier surface, the close feeling of place was retained while the works become resolutely abstract. Drawing on the work of artists Georg Baselitz and Martha Jungwirth, members of an older generation of European abstractionists, as well as Chinese-born painters Zao Wou-Ki and Cai Guo Qiang, Zhong is one of the most irrepressible talents in abstract painting of the last decade. Zhong shows four paintings on canvas, and two on paper.
— Matthew James Holman
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