Simon Lewis – "In the Sticks"
9. 10. – 1. 11. 2014

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In this exhibition, I am pleased to present new works from the series of drawings ”The Book of Soundings” by SIMON LEWIS

With this drawing project he has over the last number of years produced a series of works that have sought to carefully construct a unity between text and image. Consciously working within a graphic tradition whose broad lineage would include such works as the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, the illuminated books of William Blake and scientific illustrations from Robert Hooke and onwards, Lewis has pieced together an underplayed and laconic visual world that allows him to touch upon a wide variety of subjects without each of those subjects in turn demanding its own ”signature language”.

In his new series of drawings, Lewis expands his generalist agenda to include elements from the fields of cartooning and comic strips. Here, isolated motifs, such as sticks, model trees and a deflated balloon, instead of being given titles to underwrite their meaning, are given speech bubbles that contain disjointed dialogue and oblique mathematical references. In these new drawings, Lewis has created a subdued, background world, where the images not only announce themselves with their titles - as they have always done in his drawings – but now they also think, talk and murmur, as if silently trying to reconnect themselves with the three dimensional world of things from which they have been drawn.

In addition to these drawings, a new, smaller format edition of ”The Cabinet of Written Pictures” in five versions will also be on view.