THR333

About

With his (crocheted) paintings, sculptures and drawings, Richie Culver (*1983 in Hull, lives and works in London) unfolds an idiosyncratic monologue of stories, places, characters and stereotypes of the British working class, which is described in a poster-like, declarative way. They do not, however, exoticise or criticize the social other; rather, their tonality – which playfully adopts iconography, quotes and visual puns – makes humour the central moment. Culver’s work thus stands in a unique interplay of autodidactic, autobiographical and socially-minded art practice.

The works of the Dutch artist Gijs van Lith (* 1984 in the Netherlands, lives and works in 's-Hertogenbosch) playfully distort our expectations and fundamental understanding of what a painting can or should be. He pushes the ideas offered by action painting, abstract expressionism and tachism to their utmost conclusion, searching for a painting that consists of nothing more than gestures and raw material. This connects him to a number of artists who embrace a fundamental emptiness of meaning in their work without a sense of postmodern irony

David Rosado (born 1976 in Evora, Portugal, lives and works in Lisbon) explores in his work the norms of identity and culture in our modern society. Dwarfs and other Disney-like figures, smiling inflatable animals painted gracefully on the rough canvases with acrylic paint, refer to the paradoxical and subliminal environment of our childhood. By juxtaposing contents and blending abstraction with figuration and pop culture with art historical elements, Rosado's paintings reinforce the current problems of social stratification in a thoughtful and imminent manner, thus taking us back to a bygone era when everything appeared as if simpler.