Rhythm - Exhibition
Imitate Modern is excited to celebrate the beginning of the summer with a show that is all about movement, vibrancy, and energy. Our new group exhibition RHYTHM at 90 Piccadilly brings together prints, photography, paintings and sculpture by our resident artists, as well as selected artworks from private collections and by invited participants.
Rhythm is found in every aspect of our lives – in visual arts, in dance, and in the flow of our everyday life – and we tried to incorporate the many reflections of this term in our selection of the artworks. The show will feature the icons of the music industry, such as David Bowie and Prince, in the portraits made by Lukas Avalon, as well as Michael Jackson depicted by David LaChapelle in a photographic print entitledArchangel Michael: And No Message Could have Been Any Clearer.
Henry Hate, a London-based visual artist & tattoo artist, whose tattoos are visible on the likes of Amy Winehouse, Alexander McQueen, Boy George and Pete Doherty, pays a homage to Andy Warhol with his 2015 portrayal of another music icon Elvis Presley. The bright colours of the image, mixed with diamond dust, create an interesting juxtaposition of materials and subject matter, resulting in a playful interpretation of Elvis’ iconic posture, in two works entitled Diva Las Vegas (Fuchsia) and Diva Las Vegas (Turquoise).
Ed Ball inspires the name of the exhibition with his most significant piece to date, Rhythm (Incredible Sound). Drawing on a connection between the rhythms heard in music and our body’s visceral response to it, Ed let the music lead him in the creation of the piece. Ball described the process as “painting the music,” in this particular case the Goldie’s Incredible sound of Drum’n’Bass. The creation of any work by Ed feels like a performance to an outsider, rekindling the same kind of energy that Jackson Pollock was putting into his creation process. You can read Ed’s personal account of the experience in his blog.
George Morton-Clark’s practice brings a raw honesty through a window to his inner psyche, which also opens our eyes to a more general state of society – something he isn’t afraid to comment on. The two works that have been chosen for the show have the same authentic message that he conveys throughout his practice, and are a beautiful addition to the topic of Rhythm with their bright colours and intricate movement of brushstrokes that bring a little bit of chaos and otherworldliness to the exhibition. Cartrain’s Psycho uses the iconic image of Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie of the same name, and Triana Terry’s portraits evoke the same excited emotions that hint at a bigger story occurring to the characters outside of the frames of the canvas.
Mairi-Luise Tabbakh depicts a Vietnamese singer and model Ha Anh Vu reclining on a wooden shelf on top of the television that’s playing an erotic film. A similar intriguing aesthetic of the movement between two bodies is seen in her seductive black and white photo S&H Taxi IV. This playfulness is mirrored in Day-z’s Legs that are ready to dance in their new Louboutins. Cody Choi’s Gama #0 ’s girl finds herself falling through a blue sky, a movement that is captured in a still frame but which inexplicably evokes a sense of a force that is controlling her fall.
Dance practice is also reliant on the rhythms of music, and dancers’ movements create their own systems and compositions, which are captures in the works of Tyler Shields, who adds a fashion twist to a classical practice. Movements in our fast-paced everyday lives often go unnoticed, but photographer Oliver Dunsch manages to capture the moments of beauty in the city that would otherwise escape our grasp, as he did in his photo Found It, 2014.
The rhythm goes towards an emphasis, which could be a point of focus, or a moment of interruption, but ultimately a harmony that is formed through a unity of the whole. Irregularities and errors in the rhythm do not break the unity, but are the element that could point the viewer towards a conscious appreciation of the pre-existing rhythm that he might have not been fully aware of. In the words of a French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, “we are only conscious of most of our rhythms when we begin to suffer from some irregularity. It is the psychological, social, organic unity of the perceiver who is oriented towards the perceived, which is to say towards objects, towards surrounding and towards people that the rhythms that compose this unity are given.”
RHYTHM encapsulates the many types of motions that bring colour to our lives, and we hope that with this exhibition you will get a new perspective on the rhythms happening around you, and celebrate the beginning of the summer season with a new energy in your life.
Exhibition Runs: 31st May – 9th June 2016
Private View: 1st June
90 Piccadilly, London W1J 7NE
