Xenia Artistic Retreat: Imaginary Lines

Xenia Artistic Retreat: Imaginary Lines
14th November, 2024 – 22nd November, 2024
Daniel Katz Gallery
6 Hill Street
London
W1J 5NF

Xenia Artistic Retreat is delighted to announce, Imaginary Lines an exhibition exploring the work of contemporary artists who have participated in Xenia, shown in dialogue with important Old Master drawings from the collection of Xenia’s founder and patron, Bianca Roden.

For centuries, artists have used drawing to experiment and Imaginary Lines explores the constantly evolving nature of mark-making through time, examining what artists working today have inherited from the masters of the past, challenging the iconography of the Western canon and using or subverting them for contemporary audiences. By pairing contemporary artists with works by the Old Masters, it is possible to trace the development of drawing and how practice, perception and the application of drawing have evolved.

The artists in Imaginary Lines are: Contemporary – Nao Matsunaga, Sophie Ruigrok, Iain Andrews, Daisy May Collingridge, Abbie Griffiths, Haroun Hayward, Sarah Knowland, Graham Little, Oren Pinhassi and Hugo Wilson.

Old Masters – Il Parmigianino, Bernardo Strozzi, Il Guericino, Philips Wouwerman, Giambattista Piazzetta, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean Baptiste Oudry, Nicholas Lancret, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Francois Boucher, Jean-Honore Fragonard, Hubert Robert, Théodore Caruelle D’Aligny, Walter  Sickert, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

There is a playful immediacy to drawing which makes it particularly apt for capturing a fleeting sense of time and movement – brilliantly demonstrated in François Boucher’s Study of a man standing, an actor in Les Fâcheux by Molière (c.1730s), or in Iain Andrews (1974, UK) Boucherula rotundifolia (2024). Directly inspired by Boucher, Andrews draws on the ornate language of Rococo to convey the complexity and richness of folklore and narratives of renewal and transformation which are at the heart of his work.

As with masters from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, drawing remains the perfect medium for experimentation, with contemporary artists utilizing new materials and technologies which stretch the boundaries of what might be considered drawing. Nao Matsunaga’s (Japan, 1980) semi-abstract works inspired by the human face are drawn in watered down clay (slip) on flattened and embossed ceramic. The drama and anxiety Matsunaga exposes in his work echoes the sensual drama of Il Parmigianino’s elongated forms. Although separated by almost 500 years, both artists are exploring the possibilities of depicting expression in the human face as a means of conveying emotion.

See also

Daisy May Collingridge (1990, UK) and Walter Sickert share a common fascination with the gritty, unsettling underbelly of erotic sensuality with their respective works, Reclining Nude, Fitzroy Street, Sickert (1906) and Hilary Reclined, Daisy May Collingridge (2024). Collingridge, uses a sewing machine to ‘draw’ her voluptuousness figures ono hand-dyed, padded fabrics which also mimic and echo the fleshy folds of her subjects in works which are both disturbing and humorous.

Hugo Wilson (1982, UK) relies on Photoshop and found images to create a composite of what he has imagined in his mind’s eye, often inspired by the Old Masters and depictions of animals as symbols. The tattered, unwieldy camel of Chassis II (2024) is emblematic of the beasts fall from grace as a symbol of endurance and honour. It is juxtaposed here with Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s exquisite hare, further underlining Wilson’s critique of our unrelenting abuse of the natural world.

Maya Binkin, curator of Imaginary Lines commented; “The exchange of ideas, techniques and motifs connects artists working today with the artists of the past. Imaginary Lines is a conversation about art and its purpose; about how to make art, and how artists employ a wealth of tools by whatever means they deem appropriate to express their ideas.”

Although the output of artists working today might look very different, with the modernisation of style, the invention of new materials and techniques and the scale as materials have become more accessible and affordable, essentially little has changed in the way artists approach their work and their motivation. To engage with art history is to talk to the dead, to learn from their mistakes and successes, and communicate to subsequent generations.

Xenia Artistic Retreat: Imaginary Lines opens on the 14th of November, 2024 until the 22nd of November, 2024 at Daniel Katz Gallery

©2024 Daniel Katz Gallery

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