NEW SHOW BY DAVID BATCHELOR CELEBRATES HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH BRAZILIAN ART

Today (05.11) opens the exhibition “David Batchelor | Alfredo Volpi”, at Cecilia Brunson Projects, in London, England. The show celebrates Batchelor’s long relationship with Latin American art, and Brazilian art in particular.

The exhibition will revolve around an especially commissioned tapestry – a reproduction of one of Batchelor’s Covid Variation paintings from 2020 – which was hand-woven at the Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos, a workshop in Guadalajara that specialises in transforming, or transposing artworks into this new medium. This textile iteration has faithfully depicted all the imperfections of the original painting such as the drops of paint and bleeding of colours. It will be complemented by a variety of other works by Batchelor including some from the same series as the Covid Variation, which use colourful, zigzagging lines as the formal framework. The show will also feature examples of his Concreto sculptural works and Colour Chart paintings. Batchelor’s work will be accompanied by a viewing room presentation of paintings by Alfredo Volpi.

 

Batchelor wrote that, in his opinion, ‘much of the most interesting post-War Brazilian and Latin American art touches on three broad areas: abstraction, the city, and colour’. He also identifies these as three important pillars of his own work and that of Volpi. Colour is undoubtedly important for both artists. In Batchelor’s work, he deals with colour as it is experienced in the city: he has in his mind the colours we see on shiny plastics, advertising hoardings, and LED screens. Volpi lived, for the majority of his life, in one neighbourhood of São Paulo, Cambuci. His understanding of colour in painting would undeniably have been influenced by the light and colours which he was accustomed to seeing in his home-city. Despite this shared importance of the urban realm – the tone, texture, and weight of the two artists’ work is very different.

The exhibition remains on view until June 11, 2022.

For more information, access: https://www.ceciliabrunsonprojects.com