Stuart Semple, Roni Stretch & Antoinette Wysocki: Group show

About

Roberta Moore Contemporary is delighted to present this group show, unifying three distinctive styles of painting and print technique; merging cultural influences from the UK and US. The exhibition will take place at Mead Carney Fine Art, 45 Dover Street, 7 — 16 March 2013. Roni Stretch presents a series of eloquent and stylistic portraits and figurative paintings, alongside selected works from the Roma Series, in this first UK showing. Stretch has paintings held in public collections in the US and Europe and over 200 works in private collections worldwide. The artist's unique interpretation and exquisite style has captured the attention of myriad public figures, leading to portraiture commissions by such names as actor Robert Downey Jr. and director and producer Oliver Stone. For Stretch, each portrait is a lesson in contradictions, photo-realism and abstraction; reality and altered states. This is the first UK showing of Fated To Pretend, one of only a handful of large-scale paintings made by Semple in recent years. Exhibited originally in Hong Kong it received controversial reactions. Recently, Semple's paintings have explored the moment in childhood where innocence turns to aggression. Alongside Fated to Pretend — Semple will present a series of print works which continue the dialogue with materials iconography and fabrication. Previously focused on cultural icons - Debbie Harry and Nicki Minaj - Semple now introduces images of David Bowie to the series, which is presented here for the first time. Antoinette Wysocki, a native New Yorker, brings her most recent series of works to London, highlighting her extraordinary form of expressionist painting with works like "Warm Impermanence" and "DisOriental". Wysocki has exhibited widely in galleries in San Francisco, New York, Sacramento, New Mexico and Hong Kong.