STEVENSON is pleased to present Ian Grose's first solo exhibition at the Cape Town gallery.
Grose's paintings encompass the genres of portraiture, interiors, still life and landscape. Yet his intention is less to represent the subject of the genre than to explore our interpretation of pictures through reproduction and manipulation of select photographs and paintings. His curiosity lies in the proliferation and recontextualisation of imagery and the shifting constructs of meaning that result.
Drawing on pictures from the internet as much as from personal photographs and art history books, this body of work extends an often self-reflexive engagement with painting in the modern image economy. Within that project, much of the work stems from preoccupations with abstraction and pattern, and an ambivalence toward formalist strategy. Part apologetics, part hermeneutics, the paintings are premised on the enduring value of painterly attention in the creation and decoding of visual meaning.
Grose was born in Johannesburg in 1985 and lives and works in Cape Town. He completed his post-graduate diploma in painting at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 2010, after a BA majoring in English and Art History. His final-year exhibition was widely noticed, as was his solo exhibition at Blank Projects in Cape Town in 2011. He was awarded the Absa l'Atelier prize in 2011 and spent six months in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2012. He also received the Tollman Award for Visual Arts in 2011.
The exhibition opens on Thursday 28 February, 6 to 8pm.
Exhibiting concurrently with Grose are Claudette Schreuders and Andrew Putter.
Grose will give a walkabout of his exhibition in support of the Friends of the South African National Gallery on Friday 15 March at 11am. Entrance is R20 (members and non-members); all are welcome.
Gallery hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and Saturday 10am to 1pm.
