I have always been interested in the ways that different groups of people view one another: how they internalize their own identities, how others perceive them, and how their own self-perceptions are physically expressed. Working with portraiture during this tumultuous and historic time, as we reckon with racial discrimination and violence in the midst of a global pandemic, requires me to consider these perceptions in an entirely new way.
—Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Gagosian is pleased to present new paintings and works on paper by Nathaniel Mary Quinn. This will be his first solo presentation with the gallery in London, and will include additional works online to coincide with this year’s virtual edition of Frieze London.
At Davies Street, Quinn will present a selection of paintings, as well as Three Months In (2020), his largest work on paper to date. With its wide plate glass window, this storefront exhibition space will act as the artist’s “solo booth” for Frieze London, while the Gagosian Quarterly online will present a time-lapse video documenting him making one of the exhibited paintings earlier this year, with added commentary from the artist about his process.
While Quinn’s portraits may resemble collages, they are actually rendered in oil paint, charcoal, gouache, oil stick, pastel, and gold leaf. He begins with a vision—a flash of a face from his past—that he feels compelled to translate into reality. Collecting images from magazines, newspapers, comics, and advertisements, he reimagines them as purely aesthetic snippets detached from their original contexts, before methodically reproducing each one by hand. Using the Surrealist strategy of the cadavre exquis, Quinn covers parts of his own composition with construction paper as he works, so that no existing section influences the appearance of the next. As with his Surrealist forebears, this composite approach focuses on the nuances of the subconscious, coaxing forth repressed emotions.
