Booth B1
Vigo Gallery at Untitled Art Fair (Miami), 2023
6 - 10 September
PV: 5 December
1001 Ocean Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139
For enquiries, please contact info@vigogallery.com.
Information on the works presented:
Vigo Gallery will be returning to Untitled Art Fair (Miami) this year, with a group presentation of works by Henrik Godsk, Lakwena Maciver, Samuel Bassett, Jordy Kerwick, Stephen Chambers and James Drinkwater. In addition to their booth, the gallery is delighted to exhibit Carousel 1884 by Henrik Godsk for the Special Projects section.
Paintings by Henrik Godsk:
Godsk is of seventh generation travelling heritage, having grown up among the world of his family’s funfair in Denmark and Norway. His practice reflects pride in his upbringing and cultural identity, fusing folkloric and high art, using portraits and ‘creatures’ as vessels for his exploration of colour and form. The artist's portraits are directly reminiscent of the accentuated designs of the fairground.
The formal components of the artwork are a direct result of the artist's time spent as a child painting and renovating the panels and façades of these rides. At twelve, he began to design and paint them himself; at fifteen, he came across books about Picasso and Modigliani, the latter’s elongated necks and distorted, flattened proportions heavily influencing Godsk’s current oeuvre. Then at 23 he left fairground life to become an artist. The controlled brushwork, geometric lines, flat surfaces, and tight compositions of his cubistic portraits act as a conduit for his personal exploration of classically modernist forms. In these angular paintings, Cubism’s traditionally busy, saturated style is pared down in terms of composition, typically just one woman or creature against a monochrome or simplified background. By playing with artistic conventions of the past, Godsk offers a refreshing take on portraiture through the lens of his cultural upbringing and love of twentieth-century modernism.
The formal components of the artwork are a direct result of the artist's time spent as a child painting and renovating the panels and façades of these rides. At twelve, he began to design and paint them himself; at fifteen, he came across books about Picasso and Modigliani, the latter’s elongated necks and distorted, flattened proportions heavily influencing Godsk’s current oeuvre. Then at 23 he left fairground life to become an artist. The controlled brushwork, geometric lines, flat surfaces, and tight compositions of his cubistic portraits act as a conduit for his personal exploration of classically modernist forms. In these angular paintings, Cubism’s traditionally busy, saturated style is pared down in terms of composition, typically just one woman or creature against a monochrome or simplified background. By playing with artistic conventions of the past, Godsk offers a refreshing take on portraiture through the lens of his cultural upbringing and love of twentieth-century modernism.
In addition the our usual booth, Vigo Gallery will be presenting, this year, a Special Projects exhibition:
Carousel 1884
The installation comprises a modernist reworking of a family heirloom. Godsk is of seventh generation travelling heritage, having grown up among the world of the fun fair in Denmark. His practice reflects his pride in his upbringing and cultural identity. Across his works, fusing folkloric and high art, he utilises the portraits and creatures that form his subjects as vessels for his exploration of colour and form. Carousel 1884 will function as a gesamtkunstwerk; a fair within a fair that is also emblematic of the artist's own sentiments of nostalgia about his heritage.
The dynamic and interactive sculpture will be clad with both inward- and outward-facing portraits that reference family lore - in lieu of the usual vibrant panels of a fair ride. This will encase a hanging mobile of an undefinable creature, a nod to Calder and the artist's interest in fantastical, ambiguous mystery.
The formal components of the artwork are inseparable from the artist's time spent as a child painting the panels and façades during renovations of the rides. At twelve, Godsk began to design and paint them himself; at fifteen, he came across books about Picasso and Modigliani; and at 23, he left fairground life to become an artist. The androgenous and striking forms of the artist's portraits are directly reminiscent of the accentuated designs of these fairground rides, and Carousel 1884 will further emulate this through a mimicking of the circa 3.5-metre height required by carousels to draw a crowd.
Paintings by Jordy Kerwick:
Wolves, tigers, cobras, bears and unicorns all feature in Kerwick’s sculptures and paintings, along with hybrid and strange creatures. These animals are the subject of some of the earliest cave paintings, dating from the Palaeolithic era. The artist draws on these archetypes and ancestral memories. His monsters and many-headed creatures also hint at contemporary fears: the consequences of genetic engineering or the fallout from nuclear conflict.
Merging mythical creatures with human forms, flowers and landscapes, Kerwick’s imaginative work challenges the normal constraints of both adulthood and the art world. He currently has a solo exhibition at the Thyssen Museum, Madrid, and has exhibited internationally.
Paintings by Johnny Abrahams:
Deceptively simple, Abrahams' paintings present a unique vocabulary of satisfying meditative yet rhythmic shapes rendered with a rich texture which plays strongly with the negative space of the raw canvas.
The relationships between the symbols that are Abraham’s alphabet are dependent on nothing other than themselves. There is a sense of musicality to the compositions which convey rhythm, phasing and cadence with an unmistakable melodic character. In series, they intend to set the viewer up with both theme and variant, creating a simultaneous sense of both comfort and dissonance, hinting at a never realised pattern.
Abrahams craves a sense of balance without symmetry. The composition of each painting serves as an introduction to an overall pattern the viewer has only partial access to, suggesting a melody and then deviating from it, setting up a resolution and then arriving at an unexpected note. The forms within the compositions and the variations between individual paintings are experienced in the way microtones are experienced by a musician departing from a twelve-tone scale. The shapes seem familiar yet slightly askew and this is where the tension and drama are created, as they reference and avoid his self imposed structures. This play of chance reflects the artist's interest in the meeting of atoms; the contact between paint and canvas exacting a game of destiny.
The relationships between the symbols that are Abraham’s alphabet are dependent on nothing other than themselves. There is a sense of musicality to the compositions which convey rhythm, phasing and cadence with an unmistakable melodic character. In series, they intend to set the viewer up with both theme and variant, creating a simultaneous sense of both comfort and dissonance, hinting at a never realised pattern.
Abrahams craves a sense of balance without symmetry. The composition of each painting serves as an introduction to an overall pattern the viewer has only partial access to, suggesting a melody and then deviating from it, setting up a resolution and then arriving at an unexpected note. The forms within the compositions and the variations between individual paintings are experienced in the way microtones are experienced by a musician departing from a twelve-tone scale. The shapes seem familiar yet slightly askew and this is where the tension and drama are created, as they reference and avoid his self imposed structures. This play of chance reflects the artist's interest in the meeting of atoms; the contact between paint and canvas exacting a game of destiny.
Paintings by Samuel Bassett:
Samuel Bassett is a British artist living and working in Cornwall, where his family line has long existed as part of the fishing and mining communities. Living in a small, rural community in Penwith, near Penzance in Cornwall, hos work is intensely personal. The paintings reflect and document his multi-layered, psychological, and physical experiences within his community, and his journeys both physical and mental over the last the last few years.
His move from St Ives has offered a slower, more contemplative existence and the subsequent narratives take in the vagaries of general village life. Time stretches, with figures observed across weeks; people praying, walking, swimming, urinating in fields, picking crops, and clearing land. Yet all the time snippets of past memories come back to infiltrate this calm. Each painting seems to include many chapters of a story, mixed with quotes from the past and present.
