NEAL JONES
New Paintings and Handmade Things
9th July - 8th August
then
24th - 29th August
then
24th - 29th August
Book Launch: 'Green Guilotine' - Thursday 26th August 6.30 - 9.00pm
"I am looking for an image of self-contained wildness..."
Neal Jones
"....(Neal Jones) is involved in the perennial and the physical. His passion for nature, his love
of what he has called the compost of life, his years spent working on his allotment in North London, and his despair in the face of the destruction of nature that he sees all around him predominates the work. He has now discarded some of the nature he worked with, and developed the paintings towards those things that had come to bother and intrigue him: namely how to deal, in painterly terms, with the absurdities he sees all around him, without relinquishing the firm roots of his inspiration."
Tess Jaray (from Neal Jones: The Absurd is the New Sublime?)
of what he has called the compost of life, his years spent working on his allotment in North London, and his despair in the face of the destruction of nature that he sees all around him predominates the work. He has now discarded some of the nature he worked with, and developed the paintings towards those things that had come to bother and intrigue him: namely how to deal, in painterly terms, with the absurdities he sees all around him, without relinquishing the firm roots of his inspiration."
Tess Jaray (from Neal Jones: The Absurd is the New Sublime?)
"Press release should mention squeaky drills, sawing, the pleasure and slow pace of making things. Modernism, peasants, Malevich?/Picasso?? poetry of animate stuff...blah or... I'm "an absurd nihilist?" A bit of absurd is ok, but I'm quite sensible and grounded really, my paintings have darkness but also idiotic JOY"
Neal Jones from an e-mail to L-13
This exhibition will present paintings and useful things that Neal has made from reclaimed materials over the last year. These include plank chairs, hard wood spatulas, bellows and toy boats. He has also hand made in small editions, three books of his writings and images and a special, very limited edition box set containing the books, a spatula and a very small painting.
All of Neal Jones' work contains a radical and sublime beauty that simultaneously rejects the gloss of the new whilst bravely forging it's own (new) visionary path. He employs a critical aesthetic/anti-aesthetic, set against an acute understanding and love of his materials, their inherent power, and their absurd uselessness. The resulting paintings and objects convey a genuine sense of depth, warmth and significant self-awareness that is a rarity in contemporary culture.
L-13 will publish 'Green Guilotine' a full colour book to celebrate the exhibition on the 26th August 2010.
Image:
Neal Jones
Ideally Oil on reclaimed board
50.5 x 110 cm
2010
Courtesy of L-13 Light Industrial Workshop, London
Courtesy of L-13 Light Industrial Workshop, London
L-13 Light Industrial Workshop
31 Eyre Street Hill
T + 44 020 7713 8255
E L-13 @ L-13.org
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