Press Release
David Holland’s new exhibition, 'Imagine', takes John Lennon’s infamous song as its terms of reference. This latest series of portraits of cultural figures, text and 3-D paintings seeks to engage with some of the wider issues implied in the lyrics of the song and celebrate Holland’s fascination with molecular structures, human relationships and the associative powers of language.
The portraits of Albert Einstein, HH The Dalai lama and HRH The Prince of Wales have been deliberately chosen, to invigorate the debate between science and religion, and touch upon humanitarian and compassionate notions. The surfaces of the paintings have been built up with layers of flat colour and resolved in a frenzied array of spots of pure colour that lead the viewer into the head of the subject.
The contortions of surface colour that make up the 3-D space paintings allude to planetary objects or landscapes of the mind. The paint is applied at random on to the sphere allowing chance and gravity to fuse and for thoughts and emotions to be revealed. There is a playfulness reminiscent of a child's beach ball.
The word 'love' spirals repeatedly in black marker pen on one of the spheres. This sets up a dialogue with the portraits and the text paintings. Circular brush marks of vibrant colour oscillate to emphasize meaning and emotive associations within the text. The letters have been sporadically inverted, reversed and mirrored to imply a humorous sub-text.
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