Venue
ARTHOUSE1
Starts
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Ends
Saturday, November 5, 2016
Address
45 Grange Road. SE1 3BH
Location
London
Organiser
ARTHOUSE1

Timed to coincide with the Day of the Dead, Halloween, All Saints and All Souls Day, and Gut Fawkes Night, the exhibition is both a celebration of twenty-five years of the artist’s Black Paintings and a challenge to the last great western taboo – Death. Here, ghosts, phantoms and mythical beasts in a menagerie of anthropomorphism, stalk the galleries; myths and symbols interweave; a bull metamorphoses into a matador in his Suit of Lights, a cock is sacrificed for the dead, men are turned into swine.

Fairman is first-and-foremost a painter and, whilst the new works are often three dimensional and the show as a whole more likely to be an installation than a series of wall hung works, he sees the whole as no more than an extension of his art practice as a painter. His paintings have always had depth, are layered, in relief, with found objects burnt, collaged, or otherwise embedded within the canvas, the layering both an aesthetic device and a means of concealment. Here the objects are more loosely attached, sometimes freed altogether from the confines of the canvass but still part of the painting. A combination of layered paintings and fabricated structures promises a transformation of the gallery space into an immersive happening in which visitors are invited to experience the art rather than merely look at it.

The finished show remains obscure, a mystery, a work in progress, but masks will play a central role; the mask, a transformative instrument (like art itself) evoking thoughts of initiation rites, of subterfuge and disguise, fantasy and darkly playful entertainment, with animal masks, in a menagerie of anthropomorphism, taking on a human form and conveying human emotions such as sadness, shame, anger and fear.

Leave your preconceptions at the door and prepare to be amazed.

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