The Mystery of Doomed Romance (and other stories) - a solo show by Stephen Bliss

About

Following the success of his head-turning solo show, I, Frankenstein at the Monorex Gallery in Los Angeles, pioneering British artist, Stephen Bliss is set to preview a series of exclusive palimpsests – paintings on layers of torn, weathered and spray-tagged advertising posters, ripped from hoardings around New York City – at the Westbank Gallery in the heart of Notting Hill from Thursday 19 October to Wednesday 1 November 2017.

Juxtaposing the black humour and nascent darkness that define his work – from the iconic illustrations he helped to create for gaming phenomena, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), The Warriors, Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire to his own artistic practice – The Mystery of Doomed Romance (and other stories) magnifies the deranged, the dysfunctional and the disaffected to dramatic effect.

The show’s title derives from the artist cutting up story titles from vintage 1970s romance and superhero comics, and rearranging the words into a sequence that he deemed entertaining.

“Many of my pieces contain narratives that yield clues to the nature of strained or forgotten relationships and I felt this title perfectly defined the symbiotic relationship between the humour and the darkness that underpins my work,” explains Bliss. “Painting snippets of discarded love letters, found in flea markets, onto paper, provokes the viewer to imagine the love stories of those who are long dead, for example.”

Bliss describes his technique as ‘Frankensteining’, which is the process of piecing together disparate and sometimes incompatible elements of different images to create a coherent whole. This not only relates to the way he constructs the backdrops for each painting, but also to the way in which he creates subjects for the paintings by mixing together meticulously researched images and cultural references into his own strangely beautiful amalgamations.

“When I am walking through the streets of NYC or on the subway, I often encounter what look to me like ready-made pieces of art,” Bliss says. “Hoardings and walls are plastered with advertising posters, large sections of which have been ripped away or covered with paste ups, sprayed graffiti tags, stickers, etched protests and the ramblings of anonymous people. Tears in the posters reveal layers of long-forgotten images from other eras: parts of model’s faces and bodies are exposed; random isolated letters and words from advertising taglines become incoherent glyphs and symbols. These ready-made art walls simultaneously evolve and decay, and I love the beauty that emerges from this chaos.”

After composing the fragments ripped from those walls to create a backdrop, Bliss then draws and sprays paint onto the pieces in his highly recognisable art style, reminiscent of the artwork he helped to create for early GTA3 and GTA Vice City as Senior Artist at Rockstar Games.

These pieces are infused with elements of pop culture that have intrigued him for decades: vintage typography, dysfunctional family snapshots, punk, subcultures, gangs, cartoons and cults. Whilst his portrayal of the relationship between his characters may be dark, the undercurrent of humour cannot be overlooked: his painting, Double Dynamite (Sophomore Dildo Snaps) shows a page from an American end-of-year college book featuring portraits of students brandishing their favourite vibrators; NYC Romantic Adventures is a large comic book cover showing a backdrop of gay and straight couples kissing whilst an aggressive looking lady poses in the foreground with a noose around her neck.

The value in Bliss’ work resides in its power to simultaneously entertain, soothe, disturb and transfix. The Mystery of Doomed Romance (and other stories) opens at 7pm on Thursday 19 October so why not come along and experience the weird and wonderful world that it depicts for yourself.

The Westbank Gallery is at 3-5 Thorpe Close, Notting Hill, London W10 5XL.

The gallery will host a party night on Wednesday 25 October with live music from Loretta Heywood & Five Shades, and DJ Billy Idle. The exhibition runs until Wednesday 1 November.

For further information about Stephen Bliss, visit stephenbliss.com