(Above) David Mackintosh, The Woods. Courtesy the artist
Exhibition: David Mackintosh - The Edge of Things, Cornerhouse, Manchester, January 23 - March 28 2010
The first major show in the North-West by Manchester-based artist David Mackintosh goes on display at Cornerhouse. It includes new and recent drawings, animation and sculpture.
Mackintosh has a trademark style of minimal and macabre penwork. While sharing an interest in the dull and dark with partial namesake David Shrigley, his drawings are cleaner and less naïve.
Both artists share an interest in the comic. Visitors to this show will find disturbing images of severed heads and warships juxtaposed with mundane scenes such as a flock of birds or a man walking his dog.
David Mackintosh, Drawing Frame Thing. Courtesy the artist
A focal point of the exhibition is Drawing Frame Thing, an oak scaffold housing narrative pictures which tell different stories according to your perspective.
Gallery 2 hosts a stop frame animation of new gouache works, promising to be both surreal and seductive. A large-scale wall painting of an enchanted wood provides another likely highlight.
"The tone of the work has become more complex and elusive," independent curator Simon Morrissey has said. "Ideas of dislocation, isolation and indecision permeate work that has become more delicate in its delivery and more concerned with formal invention.
"The exhibition will emphasis new formal qualities in Mackintosh’s work presenting a refined group of drawings that stress the emergence of these more oblique presences."
The Sunderland-born artist has previously had solo shows in Bristol and London. His recently-published first monograph was called Imagine You're in a Room Full of Blind Fools Desperately Grasping at Nothing.
Open 12pm-8pm Tuesday to Saturday (6pm Sunday). Admission free
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