The Albemarle is delighted to present an exhibition showcasing exceptional talent from it's roster of internationally renowned artists.
Scottish artist Iain Faulkner graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1996 with a BA in Fine Art. He has had numerous solo shows in the UK, USA, France, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. His paintings feature a lone protagonist. Dressed uniformly in white shirt, black suit trousers and leather shoes, we see him paused between activities at a moment of reflection. These scenes highlight moments of withdrawal and consolidation, where the subject turns inward. The fact that his face is obscured or turned away allows us to see this figure as an everyman, a player both familiar and universal.
British artist Neil Douglas is known for his skilfully rendered, mixed-media representations of urban landscapes, full of the densely charged atmosphere of the modern city. Douglas’s paintings operate in a romantic manner; the emblematic compositions evoke memories of the cycle of life, birth, growth and decay. Their romance lies in an idea of redemption, that something effervescent can appear out of something base and unyielding: the urban landscape, the ring-road, the ‘precinct’, the ‘estate’. His images speak about possibilities and desires lurking beneath the prosaic surface of the everyday.
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Self-taught artist Philip Muñoz turned his attentions to art in 2007 and has since lived and worked in Bristol. His paintings are concerned with the notion of glamour and its role in social identity.
Muñoz creates portraits immersed in the urban context, whether a close-up examination of the glamorous and modified, adorned with tattoos and piercings, or a figure caught in a fleeting moment of city life. His is an intimate portrayal of the eclectic, where fashion and identity are of foremost importance. These pictures are often seductive and always demanding of attention, one is drawn in, yet inevitably kept emotionally and physically at a distance.
Korean artist Lee Jeongwoong was born in 1982 in Seoul. His accomplished paintings have earned him success in the art markets of Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, and his home country of South Korea. Through a seductively rendered representational technique, Jeongwoong belies the serious and sometimes contentious substance of his work. He overtly refers to the problematic issue of Japanese colonisation and its ongoing repercussions in modern Korea. He references the conflict between modernity and tradition and Korea’s ambivalence towards the West. These beautiful images embody his ideas, articulating a dynamic contradiction between harmonious appearance and turbulent content.
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Internationally acclaimed Korean artist Do Min paints photo-realistic dice perceived through a lens of dynamic colour and fluid motion. Through masterful draughtsmanship and imaginative interpretation of texture and form, the artist constructs a meticulously-rendered atmosphere of anticipation. Using the rolled dice to explore the undetermined and unpredictable nature of life, Do Min dramatises the impulse and excitement of subjecting ourselves to the fate of the unknown. There is innate movement in these paintings, where the die is never a settled focal point; it is always in motion, shimmering and reflecting against an ethereal tide that ripples, elongates and distorts its features.
