Danese/Corey is pleased to present Sol, an exhibition of recent paintings by Andy Harper. In his current exhibition, Andy Harper continues his journey into an exotic, visionary world of imagined botanical specimens – crystalline images reminiscent of a rotating kaleidoscope whose motion has been temporarily, and tantalizingly, paused, leaving us eager to discover what new form the shifting tumble of color will take in its next iteration.
Each of the thirteen intimately scaled paintings is titled after a month of the International Fixed Calendar, a calculus in which each month amounts to 28 days, is divided into exactly four weeks, and includes the additional month, Sol, at mid-summer. Harper's new series invites us to follow the natural progression from January to December. The character of the paintings shifts from month to month – light to dark, warm to cold, lush to spare.
Harper’s new work remains inspired by the natural world, with elements hinting at the petals of a flower or the magnified inner recesses of stamen, sepal, and pistil. But here the imagery is less dense and more abstract than in his earlier work. The sequential, repetitive forms reference nature's boundless urge to achieve symmetry, balance, form and structure; its annual capacity for self-renewal, its call to innocence, its undeniable, inestimable beauty.
Andy Harper was born in the United Kingdom in 1971. He received his BA from Brighton Polytechnic in 1993, a Master’s Degree in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in 1995, and an additional Master’s Degree in Visual Culture from Middlesex University in 1999. He was named a fellow of l'Ecole Cantonale d'Art du Valais in 2001, was invited to participate in the Thupelo Workshop in Cape Town South Africa in 2004, and in 2011 he was shortlisted for the Latitude Art Prize at Southwold, in Sussex England. Harper lives in Cornwall and has exhibited extensively throughout Europe, including two solo exhibitions in 2011 at the Page Gallery, Seoul, Korea and at Morgen Contemporary in Berlin, Germany.
A fully illustrated catalogue is available.