EXISTENCE New paintings by David Holland | 27 October - 4 December 2004
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Press Release

Holland's monumental canvases broadly aim to rationalize and purge some of the dizzying complexities and opposing forces that shadow humanity. Holland invites us to find a path, through the language of painting, with which to confront and deal with our collective nightmares.

Taking images that have partially objective and psychic origins, these paintings seem to peer inwardly, prompting often unfathomable and awkward questions to do with mortality, sexuality, and morality.

Holland exploits the correlation between early Christian iconography and the iconography of the terrorist. A triptych of three hooded, gun-toting terrorists and the serialization of Bin Laden masks have been used as a traditional device to unfetter our deepest fears. These formats simultaneously transport us to a higher level of reflection and representation.

The painting "Skulls", a giant black and mauve diptych, depicts two human skulls surrounded by bones of varying size, Holland seizes on a much-used religious symbol to stake out our ultimate destiny. By representing 'Vanitas', the death of all things material, and an acknowledgement of the transience of life, the painting's unmannered immediacy ironically seems to twist the serious business of death, to a level found on ghost train backdrops at the funfair.

The theme of sexuality is expressed most profoundly in the diptych "Dark Side of the Erotic", a howling, androgynous figure that stares back out of the canvas. The silhouetted figure is softened only by a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, its Rorschach counterpart suggesting a caged animal, a tortured soul, imprisoned within the confines of its own body.

A catalogue accompanies this exhibition with a text by Dr. G. Charles Rump, Editor for the Art Market section of the German national newspaper Die Welt.

David Holland studied painting at Central St. Martins 1991-94 and completed an MA in Painting at Chelsea School of Art and Design 1994-96.

For inquiries or requests for visuals, please contact James Colman, Jennifer Mojica, or Yuu Takehisa.
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