Portraits Diabolique

About

Gordon Furn’s totemic sculpted paintings are representations of himself and friends, partners in crime, family, girlfriends and people that in one way or another have resonated with his life enough for him to paint them. Statuesque in size these roughly hewn, energetic works depict ravers, drunken nights out and moments of closeness lost, past and current. They are chaotic, ramshackle and yet piercing and harmonious in a way that reaffirms the dark and the light in our collective condition.

Matthew Gould’s paintings strike an uneasy balance between out and out abstract expressionism and portraiture. Chaotic and roughly painted somehow the figure always comes through in some form or another. Suggestions of limbs, hands, snarling teeth, tongues, voids, horns writhe in paint. At times the figure is almost completely absent in the midst of all the paint and yet the works still manage to cling to a sense of figuration. There is an element of comedy horror, the faux seriousness in the works clinging to and yet denying themselves is evident.