Groeflin Maag Galerie is pleased to announce the third solo show at the gallery
with
Canadian artist Brad Phillips.
Sentimental Breakdown is a new group of paintings and photographs by
Vancouver based artist Brad Phillips. Here Phillips presents a disparate group of
works that, through various pictorial tactics, explore a sentimental subject
matter that is distinctly undermined by a sense of the macabre or melancholy.
While his motifs stem from a personal or diaristic impulse, his pictures are
imbued with a palpable tension within and between the works. Phillips' lush
nudes, floral nocturnes, banal details of domesticity, silhouetted figures, and
text based paintings all converse in unexpected ways, constructively complicating
initial readings by implicitly suggesting that the world depicted is not as idyllic
as first perceived. A Degas-esque nude
takes on the elegant brutality of Walter
Sickert, objects painted from flash-lit
studies suggest photographs Weegee's
crime scene photographs, paintings of book covers remind the viewer of the
latent tragedies in the authors' unreadable pages, and text works suggest
depression, anger, and black humour. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Final
Antechamber, a massive, exhaustively detailed painting of aforest at night.
The tangled branches visible in the foreground due to a flash-like light create a
visually complex and naturally beautiful display of forms. The size andillusion
of the painting invite the viewer to step into it, but also prompts a hesitation,
and the promise of returning from it is uncertain.
Text by Adam Harrison