Monday, May 22, 2006

Richard Forster at Cell Project Space: Jerwood Artists Platform


Richard Forster
Jerwood Artists Platform
Private View Friday 19th May 2006
20 May – 25 June 2006
Exhibition Open: Friday-Sunday 12noon – 6pm.
Full wheelchair access

Richard Forster’s exhibition, as part of Jerwood Artists Platform’s unique collaboration with Cell Project Space, presents a significant body of new and recent work.

On entering the gallery visitors are confronted by ‘Stack’ (2005), a narrow vertical, piled form of brightly painted resin that totters to almost human height. Presented wall-mounted are selected works from his ‘Love’ series. Mimicking A4 sheets of white paper that have been screwed up into a ball, then re-found and re-flattened, these resin casts reveal discrete triangular forms almost embossed into the crumpled surfaces. The triangles vary their position from one work to another, layering the potential narratives.

The synthetic, candy pinks of ‘Stack’ are carried through to the other spaces. In the main gallery a vast arrangement of patterned and polished stainless steel discs float a few inches off the floor. Sat on top of the discs are abstracted sculptures, reminiscent of stacked chairs, but more obliquely read as temporary homes for an intense string of scribbled lines fabricated in neon tubing.

For the end gallery Forster will create a new arrangement that combines wall and floor based work. The chair motif and neon undergo further mechanisms of abstraction, resulting in a simpler exploration of form and light that still acknowledges the role of the given gallery architecture – a common theme running throughout the artist’s work.

To accompany the exhibition there will be an illustrated catalogue available with text written by Sally O'Reilly.

Richard Forster’s drawings can be seen in ‘Daisychain’, selected by Bruce Haines, 12 May – 16 July at MOT Gallery, Unit 54, Regents Studios, 8 Andrews Road, London E8.