PRESS RELEASE

CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON

Novembre 15 - December 13  2008

 

Christopher Thompson was born in Grimsby, England, in 1969.

His background at the Norwich School of Art and Royal Academy School, provide him with a thorough mastery of techinque which allows him to express and develop the theme of everyday life. His work is undoubtedly the expression of our time and the realism through wich he represents it, reveals a particular anglosaxon atmosphere that really fascinates Italian public,  as ascertained with the group-show " Figurazione Brritannica" (British Realism) in 2005 in Bologna, and the  ArteFiera edition of that same year.

His subjects are human figures that definitely belong to our time, often portraits of his closest friends but also other persons he knows, on whom he focusses penetrating into their most intimate part, which makes him a great portrayer. His recent portrait to the British actor Peter Postlethwaite in now part ot the National Portrait Gallery collection, in London.

A selection of approximately twenty paintings will be exhibited in Bologna as Christopher Thompson's first one-man show in Italy.

STATEMENT BY CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON

"The fascination with oil paint and its potential for transformation, the way it can be manipulated endlessly in the pursuit of a particular vision remains essentially unchanged with artists through centuries of painting. As are the difficulties, the constant demands for fresh engagement and the ability to absorb information. It is a part of this history, a particular strain of Western visual culture characterized by a precise contemplative observation of the everyday, from Northern European paintings by Vermeer and Friedrich through echoes of Whistler, Seurat and Hopper, within which I am working.

The pictures are redolent with an atmosphere of mystery that both provokes and frustrates a desire for narrative resolution. They are a snapshot of unfolding time, the starting point for which can be very simple, a glimpse of a figure in the street, the fall of light on a river or the patterns of trees silhouetted against the sky. The romanticism of the imagery is infused with an underlying classicism, from the tightly controlled surfaces and strict pictorial organization to a rich but restrained palette. A contemporary vision manifests itself through the figures, self absorbed and contemplative, evoking the tensions and fragilities of everyday life. In their synthesis of the quotidian and the ineffable, the paintings are a statement on the nature of subjective experience in our time.

The paint itself is applied with brush and knife. Scraped, rubbed and rolled, passages are obscured then revealed. Chance encounters offer new pictorial directions and accidents, that provide answers where illustration seemed the only solution, remain alongside highly worked and deliberate areas. The surface is continually re-worked to keep the paint fresh and vivid and to retain its quality as a uniquely powerful medium for description and feeling."

Christopher Thompson