STAND EASY An exhibition of new work by George Coutouvidis
Prince Albert Gallery 16 December - 17 January 2020
I
n his second solo exhibition at the Prince Albert Gallery, George Coutouvidis reveals a body of work that coheres like kin, like an extended family.
At Dirst glance, there appear to be fewer colonial subjects and scenes of war. We Dind portraits of royals ‘posing’ for the artist, we are introduced to individual sitters who invite us to engage; and we are transported to the canals of Venice. Carl Becker in his article in Art Times Dec/Jan 19 wrote “Survival, not the realityshow kind, but as in the trenches of World War 1, is a recurring theme. Fascinated by calamity and human folly, the artist’s mindset is more Goya, less the cool detachment of contemporary art.” Familiar characters - the artists’s subjects – emerge from earlier paintings. “The End of MM” and “Here’s looking at You” are drawn from popular culture. The art history references (Goya, Delacroix, Titian, Gainsborough and Vermeer) are there, yet the tone is informal, more ‘cool’, more everyday. Coutouvidis’ source material intrigues the viewer: do the visual media that pervade our living tell us who we are? His response is that he has no idea whether his content is relevant today. In his remaking, Coutouvidis’ sources take shape as simpler forms. This body of work signals a stylistic shift: a ‘shorthand’ orders the painted surface. Outlines are sketched in almost throw-away brush marks. “Pugs and Owners” with three sedate sitters and their dogs is painted in shorthand, and situated in colour. The violence in “The Lion Hunt” is rendered in short broken strokes. And in “Wow” the loosely brush-stroked triumphal arch steals attention away from the line-up of beauty queens. MM, unframed oil on canvas, 580mm x 780mm
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