RUPERT SHRIVE Screwed up heads
10 April - 3 May 2008
Rupert Shrive was born in 1965 and grew up in Norfolk. He studied at Norwich School of Art and St Martin’s, and he lives in Paris and London. This show follows several highly successful one-man exhibitions in Madrid, Milan and London, and group shows in Paris and London.
The title of the show,‘Screwed Up Heads’, refers directly to the unique technique he has developed of redrawing or reforming a painting on completion.
After painting a portrait in acrylic on brown paper, from life, memory or reference, he then crushes, screws up,rips or stamps on the 'finished' work; applying a 3-dimensional technique to a 2-dimensional surface, in order to represent the image in a more visceral way–a transfiguring alchemy of painting into sculpture.
The resulting reliefs erupting from a cyclical trinity of creation, destruction and recreation–an activity fraught with risk that can end in either triumphant success or miserable failure; there being such a short ‘window’ within which he can work that many don't survive at all.
To some extent, Shrive’s work mirrors Cubism, in that, instead of trying to bring many viewpoints into one, they explode into many different viewpoints from one.
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