COMMA 10 Stuart Cumberland

About

A highly respected painter, born in 1970, Stuart Cumberland has, more consistently and for longer than practically any one else in the UK, maintained a flirtation with the visual power of Modernist painting. Cumberland enjoys the possibilities opened up by an almost endless expressive recombination of artistic styles and statements. His paintings are a satisfying mix of knowing, disciplined gestural abstraction and a riot of referential ambiguities. Cumberland paints in series with the intent to humorously communicate specific themes, for the most part relating to Sigmund Freud's idea of ‘sublimation' - the channeling of 'lower' sexual urges into 'higher' aims such as art or science. Responding to the opportunity to develop his practice through his commission for COMMA, Cumberland proposes to exhibit a new series of six oil paintings that have an ambitious change in size, paint application and use of colour. Cumberland is the first specific painter to be asked to make a series of independent works for COMMA at Bloomberg SPACE. He will show alongside New York based artist Melissa Marks who will draw and paint directly on to the wall.