Paul Reid, Minotaur (2005). Oil on canvas. © the artist
Exhibition: The Veil, Isis Gallery, London, until December 19 2009
Culture24 couldn't make the opening of The Veil (named after "the veil of consciousness which needs to be drawn back to see the true meaning of things"), but Isis Gallery's founder, John Marchant, makes it sound like a pretty memorable bash.
"The great and the good turned out in force," he tells us, namedropping "a fashion legend here, a Turner Prize winner there, a world-renowned painter, more than enough Hooch and a BBC film crew".
"We always have a decent party, but it always ends the same way – clearing up the bottles and putting out the trash."
Paul Reid, Study for Odyesseus on the Island of Circe (2006). Oil on canvas. © the artist
The debris ended up in a different dustbin this time, after the gallery moved from its beautiful former home in Hanway Street – "I think we could have summed that place up with the phrase 'elegant dereliction'," reflects Marchant – to a new space in Shoreditch designed by Stephen Taylor.
They had some reservations about moving to the scenester Mecca, where Marchant could see parallels with his former home on the Lower East Side of Brooklyn in New York, but it's worked perfectly, never threatening to stymie Marchant's idiosyncratic attitude to exhibitions.
Paul Reid, Actaeon (2009). Oil on canvas. © the artist
"This show had an unlikely genesis – don't they always?" he says, describing the works by Scottish artist Paul Reid and Dane, Martin Erik Andersen.
"I'd seen a catalogue of Paul Reid's paintings at a friend's gallery and was knocked sideways. It threw so many questions about the validity and purpose of the very practice of paintings.
Martin Erik Andersen, Stairway to Heaven - Highway to Hell (2008). Neon wire, knitting, crocheting, steel, silicone, colored spots, papers. © the artist
"I showed the work to various people and mostly got one of two very different responses – either 'wow' or 'why?'"
Lion and leopard heads are imposed on nude men in Reid's graphically unsettling, centaur-like creations, in stark contrast to Andersen’s decidedly less primal set of abstract sculptures, where fluorescent light tubes shine under knitted acrylics and iron fittings. Persian carpets, tissue paper, latex cushions, incense sticks and hotplates also jostle for visual attention.
Martin Erik Andersen, Gospel of Truth - Martin as Alef (2009). Knitting, steel, pigment print, polyester, concrete, Pc, projector, randomized avi-files, textile, paper. © the artist
Marchant was contacted out of the blue by Andersen, who was interested in work held by the gallery for a project in Denmark.
"As soon as I saw what Martin does I was absorbed in his work," says Marchant. "I do see quite a lot of art and it is rare that I get a strong visceral response – this is what I look for, and this is what I got.
"It very quickly occurred to me to show the two artists together. Their practices are so opposed that it makes sense."
Open 12pm-6pm Tuesday-Sunday. Isis Gallery, Charlotte Road, London. Visit the Gallery online for more.
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