About
The This And The That
Justin Allen & Roland Hicks
11th June to 10th July 2010
Eleven is delighted to present an exhibition by painters Justin Allen and Roland Hicks. The This And The That is an ode to the mundane. Celebrating the poetic potential of minuscule visual accidents a piece of bubble gum thrown on the pathway or a bit of Sellotape the two artists investigate distinct aspects of hyperrealist painting.
Hicks' series of works on paper looks at stationary items turned into makeshift sculptures by the bored student or worker. Unlike most of his previous works, Hicks' new subjects are clearly not just found, they are made, assembled. No matter how modest the gesture, they demonstrate a sort of creative will. The balls of elastic bands also bring to the series the idea of cosmology, as if the artist was setting up another universe, one of daydreaming and unrealised projects. Meticulously represented, each piece is a painterly jewel, a magnifying glass pointed at our most unconscious movements and a sublimation of the banal. Some of the works clearly reference art history, the biro top in Black Project (2010) evokes Brancusi's Bird in Space (1923) whereas the depiction of pencil shavings in Fault was Found (2010) could be the romantic painting of a volcano. Hicks maps a geography of idleness. More than ever, his paintings are not so much about what they represent than about what the objects can become, once caught in the meanderings of our imagination.
While Hicks' subjects belong to the limited territory of the desktop, Justin Allen's discarded food packaging and gums are firmly set within the urban fabric. The street isn't for him a mere background, but a crucial element in his carefully composed dystopian still lives. The strip of scrubland in Beautiful Day Sidewalk (2008-2009) has something of a Constructivist motif. It gives the painting dynamism and direction. It also adds a narrative element, a context to this chunk of pavement painted like an icon. The idea of relics runs throughout these paintings. Archaeologist of the everyday, Allen retrieves the traces of our existence and turns them into symbols.
Roland Hicks' solo shows include I Just Can't Stop It at Eleven (2009), Give Me Every Little Thing (2007) which toured from Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown to Ffotogallery, Cardiff. Past group shows include John Moores 25 (2008/9) at Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and his work is in the collections of Land Securities, Saatchi Gallery, Hiscox, The Fleming Collection, Oxford University Art Collection and Unilever Art Collection. Hicks was born in 1967 and lives and works in London.
Justin Allen's first solo exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York runs from 13th May to 12th June 2010. Past exhibitions include Justin Allen: Small Paintings, (2009), Robert Miller Gallery, New York; All Too Human, Young American Painters (2009), Schuebbe Projects, Dusseldorf, Germany; Backyard (2009) Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles and Size Matters, Recent Small Scale Paintings (2007), Hudson Valley Center of Contemporary Art which toured to Knoxville Museum of Art (2008). Allen was born in 1976 and lives and works in New York
For further information on The This And The That or forthcoming exhibitions at Eleven please contact Coline Milliard on 020 7823 5540 or coline@elevenfineart.com.
