fête de l'obscurité

About

Timed to coincide with the Day of the Dead, Halloween, All Saints and All Souls Day, and Guy Fawkes Night, the exhibition is both a celebration of twenty-five years of the artist’s Black Paintings and a challenge to the last great western taboo - Death. Here, ghosts, phantoms and mythical beasts in a menagerie of anthropomorphism, stalk the galleries; myths and symbols interweave; a bull metamorphoses into a matador in his Suit of Lights, a cock is sacrificed for the dead, men are turned into swine.

Fairman is first-and-foremost a painter and, whilst the new works are often three dimensional and the show as a whole more likely to be an installation than a series of wall hung works, he sees the whole as no more than an extension of his art practice as a painter. His paintings have always had depth, are layered, in relief, with found objects burnt, collaged, or otherwise embedded within the canvas, the layering both an aesthetic device and a means of concealment. Here the objects are more loosely attached, sometimes freed altogether from the confines of the canvass but still part of the painting. A combination of layered paintings and fabricated structures promises a transformation of the gallery space into an immersive happening in which visitors are invited to experience the art rather than merely look at it.

The finished show remains obscure, a mystery, a work in progress, but masks will play a central role; the mask, a transformative instrument (like art itself) evoking thoughts of initiation rites, of subterfuge and disguise, fantasy and darkly playful entertainment, with animal masks, in a menagerie of anthropomorphism, taking on a human form and conveying human emotions such as sadness, shame, anger and fear.

Leave your preconceptions at the door and prepare to be amazed.