exhibition

Neo-Cons & Dogs

Paul Butler

19.May.05 - 25.Jun.05
Wed-Sun 12-6 or by appt

Contemporary Art Projects
20 Rivington St
London EC2A 3DU
020 7739 1743
info@caprojects.com
www.caprojects.com
Tube Old Street, Liverpool Street, Shoreditch / Hoxton

Functionaries of power in courts and boardrooms lurk in monochrome spaces, blinking neon signs and vermilion tail-lights on the move, world events in blood red, portly balding figures with intimidating Kissinger-like horn rimmed spectacles, snarling dogs of war.

Paul Butler's paintings perpetually shift between emotional registers. The most noticeable shift is between the paintings playing out everyday scenes with a satiric sense of humour and those commenting scathingly on recent world events. The diversity in the work is always contained by a unity attained through Butler’s sense of touch. Not just the routine painter's sense of touch - Butler’s is particular to him in being cunningly borrowed from drawing. His use of gloss paint works to speed up the surface, lending the work a graphic immediacy. The result is a stirring play-off between the medium of paint and the message conveyed through it.

Key to Butler’s painting is the symbiotic relationship between painterly technique and subject matter. Where often painters sacrifice one in the name of the other, in his paintings they work in empathy to reinforce one another. This strategic counterpoint between the two is indeed impressive and goes to prove how a message, whether political or otherwise, can only be achieved through a convincing use of the medium.

Paul Butler is currently professor of painting at the Surrey Institute of Art & Design University College. He has shown widely in the UK and Europe including the John Moores, East International, British Council – Bologna and an Arts Council touring exhibition. His most recent one-person exhibition was at Robert Sandleson Gallery.

A selection of images from the exhibition are on the website. A catalogue to accompany the exhibition, with essays by Alex Coles, critic and writer, and Tana Wollen, Head of Marketing, Channel 4’s 4Learning, is available upon request.

Paul Butler participates in the Fosterart Collection, an artist-owned body of work that is lent by Fosterart to public and private companies with the aim of improving the workplace environment and increasing access to contemporary art.

Publications Neo-Cons & Dogs, 2005

 

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