Graham Little

About

Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new drawings and a large floor - based sculpture by the British artist Graham Little. Graham Little's work reveals an obsession with beauty and detail. In his recent drawings the artist has worked from his own photographs of carefully composed tableaux vivants. Among these works is a triptych in gouache and coloured pencil representing the three stages of his wifeàŠ¼s pregnancy. Several of the objects depicted in these drawings are suggestive of balloons, ribbons or wrapped presents, which allude to a celebratory atmosphere and a sense of something concealed and expectant. The depiction of rich drapery, deep colours, intense light, and dark shadows demonstrates a concern for Baroque aesthetics while the positioning of the female figure is inspired by contemporary fashion photography. LittleàŠ¼s floor-based sculptures allude to the shape and scale of the human figure but their surfaces demonstrate a fascination for print design with their repeated still-life motifs. His use of interlocking, cuboid components shows a disregard for MinimalismàŠ¼s conceptual tenets in favour of its superficial design qualities. With their varied and colliding patterns LittleàŠ¼s sculptures reference the visual noise of our media obsessed society. In these passages of meticulously rendered pencil drawing, half recognisable elements disappear beneath one another before the viewer has a chance to reconcile them. In Facts are stupid things (fruit vs. fashion), 2008, LittleàŠ¼s largest sculpture to date, the extended linear elements and various repeated motifs produce different atmospheres and rhythms. Visual styles of different hierarchies and art historical genres are played against one another with jarring effect. Where the hand painted folds of crimson drapery recall the colours, textures, and mood of Venetian portrait paintings, his simulated exposed brickwork undermines the artifice of illusion and brazenly disrupts the ongoing collision of geometric patterns. LittleàŠ¼s sculptures ultimately function as an expanded form of painting; one in which we come to read the composition at different speeds and times, and in the round.