Sophie Barber: Kim and Kanye kiss without tongues
Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
1 May – 12 June 2021
Alison Jacques is pleased to announce the opening of ‘Kim and Kanye kiss without tongues’ (1 May – 12 June 2021) at Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, the British artist’s debut solo exhibition in the US.
Barber’s work is animated by a subtle series of paradoxes. Whatever she might be portraying– Barry Flanagan or Franz West sculptures at a radically reduced scale, articles from Art Review magazine, or photographs of celebrities taken by artists – she does so with a palpable skepticism of and an obvious admiration for her subject. It is an act of barbed homage. Whether she is working really big or really small, her painting is characterized by a sense of excess or abundance, that which is liable to register in the colossal size of the large, un-stretched works, or in the dense, almost confectionary application of paint and oil stick of the small-scale paintings.
Eschewing the rectilinear formality of the conventionally stretched canvas, her irregularly-shaped, quasi-sculptural supports bring to mind soft, knobby bricks or lopsided cushions. They have an antic quality; their mere form full of personality. Despite its compact, hand-sized scale, the small work is not precious. Indeed, its lack of preciousness can at times seem cavalier. And yet any potential cavalierness in her approach to picture making is immediately belied by a serious and sensuous consideration of what a painting is or can be, and its comparatively primitive role in the production and promulgation of images in the 21st Century.