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![Grosvenor Gallery
3rd - 20th December 2008
Grosvenor Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of painter Mark Shields. Shields is an artist who for two decades has been consistently committed to making serious and thought-provoking work. During that time his work has gained considerable recognition and an international following, His last solo was in Berlin [Brusberg Gallery] and he has shown at Art Basel for three years. This new exhibition of recent work will be his first in Britain for over two years.
While his style and treatment have evolved over these years his artistic creed has remained unaltered. It is a belief which permeates his whole way of thinking. That our purpose and role is to uncover and illuminate those signs which encourage us to contemplate the Eternal.
He is neither a campaigner for traditional methods and techniques nor an opponent of new directions in art. Indeed the so-called History of Art, its fragmentation and redefining, are largely irrelevant in his world. Art is for him one means amongst many whereby service to sacred realities may be carried out. He is at the same time painfully aware that such high aims are humanly unattainable. He must simply do what is expected of him. An obligation and a calling. He parallels the making of art with the act of prayer. Confessional, sacramental and redemptive.
Now drawing with pastel and charcoal on canvas, these most recent works continue to be dominated by the human figure. Having their origins in sources as varied as simple encounters on foreign streets, half-remembered childhood awakenings, ancient biblical narratives, phrases from Milosz or Pessoa, passages from the music of Kancheli and Rautavaara, and images from the films of Ceylan and Angelopoulos, his figures seem suspended in a fateful 'in-between'. He aspires to the mood of 'bright-sadness' epitomized by the byzantine tradition. An unsettling balance of joy and sorrow. This perpetual inner conflict between rival certainties is the Colloquy of the title. With a restricted palette and further simplification of forms, it is what is left out which seems to take on a peculiar significance in these works. The artist quotes what was said of Mallarme, 'the first duty is to preserve the rhythmical play of the gaze....the eye catches a vague glimpse of one thing as it follows another'.
It is this fascination with things on the periphery of the 'real' and the inherent shortcomings of figuration, which prompted the origin of a series of collages, close to abstraction, also shown in this exhibition. Fragments of destinies, as it were, they re- examine T.S. Eliot's mournful assertion, "All time is unredeemable"
For Press Enquiries please contact Emily Austin
emily@grosvenorgallery.com 020 7484 7979](EX_Colloq%20press_files/shapeimage_3.png)
