Enzo Marra | Demigods
22 April – 8 May 2011
curated by Chiara Williams & Debra Wilson
Press release
curated by Chiara Williams & Debra Wilson
Press release
| ww_gallery_demigods_enzo_mara_press_release.pdf |
Francis Bacon by Enzo Marra
WW Gallery is pleased to present 'Demigods', a solo show of new paintings by Enzo Marra 22 April – 8 May. Enzo Marra's painterly work is characterized by elements of history, mythology, surrealism and metamorphosis. His new 'Demigods' series is a tribute to some of the artists who have inspired him, Marra's own personal heroes and heroines, rendered as deified mortals.
The 40 exhibited works by Marra (34 paintings and 6 drawings) depict 32 modern and contemporary artists including: Francis Bacon, John Baldessari, Joseph Beuys, Sandra Blow, Constantin Brancusi, Glenn Brown, Helen Chadwick, Anthony Caro, Jean Dubuffet, Gilbert & George, Arshile Gorky, Anthony Gormley, Maggi Hambling, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Callum Innes, Willem de Kooning, Richard Long, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Bruce Nauman, Cornelia Parker, Grayson Perry, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Bridget Riley, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Mark Wallinger, Alison Wilding, Ai Wei Wei.
Enzo Marra's works on paper will be shown at this year's Venice Biennale at WW Gallery's collateral exhibition ‘Afternoon Tea' 30 May – 12 June. In January 2011, four new works from the Demigods series were shown with WW Gallery in Art Projects at the London Art Fair. Marra (b. 1975) has had commissions and exhibitions in the UK and in Italy, including selection for exhibition in the Threadneedle Prize 2010 and the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009. He lives and works in Brighton and is represented by WW Gallery.
The 40 exhibited works by Marra (34 paintings and 6 drawings) depict 32 modern and contemporary artists including: Francis Bacon, John Baldessari, Joseph Beuys, Sandra Blow, Constantin Brancusi, Glenn Brown, Helen Chadwick, Anthony Caro, Jean Dubuffet, Gilbert & George, Arshile Gorky, Anthony Gormley, Maggi Hambling, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Callum Innes, Willem de Kooning, Richard Long, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Bruce Nauman, Cornelia Parker, Grayson Perry, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Bridget Riley, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Mark Wallinger, Alison Wilding, Ai Wei Wei.
Enzo Marra's works on paper will be shown at this year's Venice Biennale at WW Gallery's collateral exhibition ‘Afternoon Tea' 30 May – 12 June. In January 2011, four new works from the Demigods series were shown with WW Gallery in Art Projects at the London Art Fair. Marra (b. 1975) has had commissions and exhibitions in the UK and in Italy, including selection for exhibition in the Threadneedle Prize 2010 and the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009. He lives and works in Brighton and is represented by WW Gallery.
Cy Twombly by Enzo Marra
“The word ‘time-warp' sprang to mind as I cast my eye over the work of Enzo Marra for the first time at his tiny Brighton-based studio. As if the paintings themselves were not evocative enough of a bygone era, the smell of oils and the sight of canvases piled up in various stages of completion across every inch of wall and floor space, added to the illusion that I was in the period and company of one of the old School of London painters.”
(Debra Wilson, Director, WW Gallery)
Enzo Marra's painterly work is characterized by elements of history, mythology, surrealism and metamorphosis. His new ‘Demigods' series is a tribute to some of the artists who have inspired him, Marra's own personal heroes and heroines, rendered as deified mortals.
Marra is an artist in his studio, painting artists at work in their studios, each depicted in a manner that conjures up our collective romantic vision of the artist toiling away in a cosy bohemian garret. Subjects from Francis Bacon to Gilbert & George and Jackson Pollock to Cornelia Parker, are all handled in the same thick impasto and tonal palette of blacks, greys and whites.
Marra's paintings have a nostalgic, reverential quality and surfaces that are laid bare for the comparisons that are there to be drawn. Stylistically, ‘Demigods' encompasses an array of influences, from the almost calligraphic language of Giacometti to the abstract textural works of Zebedee Jones, and while Marra is to some extent a throwback to the gestural figuration of Auerbach, Kossoff and the School of London, he is no mere imitator. In recording the apotheosis of these artists, Marra's subject matter reinvents a tradition of artists portraying one and other, a genre made famous by Gaugin and Vangogh during their tempestuous time in Arles of by the Bloomsbury Group, who painted and recorded each other from youth to old age.
Marra's Demigods are dense portraits of men and women at work, simple yet inspirational. His icons are distant, yet attainable, not enhanced, nor superhuman; they are simply artists, like him. Marra relates to his subjects as equals, yet his monochrome palette and viscous brushwork somehow mythologises them to an even greater extent than the black & white photographs from which some of the paintings derive. Mythology plays an important part in Marra's work, and he describes the framing of artists in their studios as “a potent mirror of the hopes and expectations of a million artists, following the exact same path”.
This mythologising of the artist's persona has roots in Giorgio Vasari's ‘Lives'*, which popularised and venerated artists such as Michelangelo, creating an iconography upon which so many of our stereotypes and notions of ‘god-given' talent originate, and a romanticising idolatry which can perhaps be seen as a forerunner of our contemporary celebrity culture.
While Marra doesn't place his subjects on a pedestal, he does immortalise them. Viewed collectively, Marra's ‘Demigods' are a conceptual take on the tradition and history of painting and the notion of the artist's public image. The paintings are refreshingly and reassuringly forward-looking, and they seem, in an endearing and candid manner, to preparing Marra for his place among the varied group of artists he has portrayed.
* Lives of the Artists (1550), biographies and anecdotes about the major Renaissance artists, a set text for art historical studies and a template for many artist biographies that have followed. Before Vasari, artists were predominately considered artisans, skilled craftsmen living in the shadow of the church or patrons such as Lorenzo de Medici.
(Debra Wilson, Director, WW Gallery)
Enzo Marra's painterly work is characterized by elements of history, mythology, surrealism and metamorphosis. His new ‘Demigods' series is a tribute to some of the artists who have inspired him, Marra's own personal heroes and heroines, rendered as deified mortals.
Marra is an artist in his studio, painting artists at work in their studios, each depicted in a manner that conjures up our collective romantic vision of the artist toiling away in a cosy bohemian garret. Subjects from Francis Bacon to Gilbert & George and Jackson Pollock to Cornelia Parker, are all handled in the same thick impasto and tonal palette of blacks, greys and whites.
Marra's paintings have a nostalgic, reverential quality and surfaces that are laid bare for the comparisons that are there to be drawn. Stylistically, ‘Demigods' encompasses an array of influences, from the almost calligraphic language of Giacometti to the abstract textural works of Zebedee Jones, and while Marra is to some extent a throwback to the gestural figuration of Auerbach, Kossoff and the School of London, he is no mere imitator. In recording the apotheosis of these artists, Marra's subject matter reinvents a tradition of artists portraying one and other, a genre made famous by Gaugin and Vangogh during their tempestuous time in Arles of by the Bloomsbury Group, who painted and recorded each other from youth to old age.
Marra's Demigods are dense portraits of men and women at work, simple yet inspirational. His icons are distant, yet attainable, not enhanced, nor superhuman; they are simply artists, like him. Marra relates to his subjects as equals, yet his monochrome palette and viscous brushwork somehow mythologises them to an even greater extent than the black & white photographs from which some of the paintings derive. Mythology plays an important part in Marra's work, and he describes the framing of artists in their studios as “a potent mirror of the hopes and expectations of a million artists, following the exact same path”.
This mythologising of the artist's persona has roots in Giorgio Vasari's ‘Lives'*, which popularised and venerated artists such as Michelangelo, creating an iconography upon which so many of our stereotypes and notions of ‘god-given' talent originate, and a romanticising idolatry which can perhaps be seen as a forerunner of our contemporary celebrity culture.
While Marra doesn't place his subjects on a pedestal, he does immortalise them. Viewed collectively, Marra's ‘Demigods' are a conceptual take on the tradition and history of painting and the notion of the artist's public image. The paintings are refreshingly and reassuringly forward-looking, and they seem, in an endearing and candid manner, to preparing Marra for his place among the varied group of artists he has portrayed.
* Lives of the Artists (1550), biographies and anecdotes about the major Renaissance artists, a set text for art historical studies and a template for many artist biographies that have followed. Before Vasari, artists were predominately considered artisans, skilled craftsmen living in the shadow of the church or patrons such as Lorenzo de Medici.
