Still Life
Last year MoMA in New York put on a show of Cezanne’s drawings. “Drawing is merely the configuration of what you see” the artist said – a practice that taught him “to see well.” It’s a simple way of stating the radical reconfigurations Cezanne undertook in his work, which cast the relationship between what we see and what we know in new grooves.
In his still lifes the weight of objects is present, not just their atmosphere: the sense that objects owe their form to gravity, but also to an escape from gravity. That, as the painter said, “they never cease to be alive”: “These glasses, these dishes, they talk among themselves. They whisper interminable secrets.” Secrets about perspective, colour and space in flux, that the painter sought to render – in the ostensibly static medium of still life – without freezing the inherent dynamism he perceived.
This week’s curation is of still life: here you’ll find contemporary artists working with classic subjects of the genre as well as more unusual ones, in a range of formal experimentations and styles.
You can also browse all still lifes currently displaying at the gallery.
Sit Down, I Empathise With You by Eleanor Dunning
Quince by Theresa Reilly-Cooper
Pink Stones by Tyler Watson
Oak and Glass, Study by James O'Connell
Forbidden Fruit #2 by Elizabeth Scoffin
Boiled Egg by Rosemary Burn
HP & Heinz, 2022 by Joel Goldstein
Sea Pinks and Shells by Rosemary Lewis
Pomeganate by Judy Pilarczyk
Lucid Dreamer by Mark Bletcher
