Nicholas Robinson gallery is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition of British painter, Stuart Cumberland, a continuation of his practice recently articulated in a solo show at the approach in London. Called Fort/Da, (Gone/There in German) and quoted from Freud’s Beyond the Pleasur... Read more
Nicholas Robinson gallery is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition of British painter, Stuart Cumberland, a continuation of his practice recently articulated in a solo show at the approach in London. Called Fort/Da, (Gone/There in German) and quoted from Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle from 1920, the show sought to examine the presence and absence of Freud’s game in painterly form.
In similar vein, the paintings in Gone/There assert a clear and strong physical presence through the use of bold, black, quasi-cartoon outlines of figural elements. Blocked areas of these passages are then obscured, palimpsest-like, to allow for a simpler pictorial element to exist on top.
At times this passage shows the ghost marks of the line underneath, and in others a solid color of bravura painterliness takes their place. In both instances, the unequivocal flatness of the surface remains unchallenged, and the overlaid element – the creator of the ‘absence’ – in turn asserts its own emphatic (ironic) presence.
The works are decidedly homemade, but quote and parody the tropes of mechanical production. For instance, the CMYK palette mimics the composition and extrapolation of colors in digital printing. The immediacy of the painted line uses a drawn schema that is then projected onto the surface and loosely utilized as compositional template (explaining the multiple permutations of the figural idioms from one painting to the next), and the use of benday dots imply silkscreen and/or printing processes, but are in fact executed by means of painting through hand-cut stencils.
Redolent with knowing humor and arch references, Cumberland makes serious paintings that develop the diversity present in modern and contemporary painting. Variously evoking Lichtenstein, Polke, Durham and even Oehlen, Cumberland makes fresh, energetic and sophisticated paintings that slyly use caricature without falling victim to its superficial triteness.
Based in London, Cumberland has exhibited worldwide, was the recipient of a Saatchi Royal College of Art Fellowship, and was most recently exhibited at the prestigious Bloomberg Space in London.
