David Wightman: ARIELA – Art Plugged

David Wightman: ARIELA
Right until 28th May well 2022
Grove Sq. Galleries
156 New Cavendish Road
London
W1W 6YW

Ariel, a solo exhibition of new functions by British up to date painter David Wightman — the most current artist to be a part of their developing roster. Comprising a series of paintings, prints, and drawings, Ariel will operate until 28th May possibly 2022. Wightman is renowned for his hanging imaginary landscapes, integrating collage, color, and composition to build worlds which blur the lines between fiction and actuality.

Influenced by the color idea of Josef Albers and the chic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, Wightman’s fantasy vistas defy strict categorisation, evoking elements of both equally the Intimate and the Summary. His is effective give a glimpse into yet another entire world — seemingly true nonetheless fully fictional.

Developing up in the working-course suburbs of Increased Manchester, Wightman took inspiration from his instant environment, transforming the wallpapered partitions of his childhood house into the mountains and ravines of his imagined scenes. His get the job done combines formal creative influences with the fantasy art he noticed all through his youth in the 1980s. Wightman moved to London to review Good Art at Middlesex University and went on to achieve a Masters in Portray from the prestigious Royal Higher education of Artwork, London at the age of 23.

Wightman starts each individual painting with a ‘cartoon’ – the artist’s time period for his fragile line-drawing studies – prior to little by little collaging the canvas surface with hundreds of hand-lower parts of textured wallpaper to make his landscape. Once a composition is entirely collaged, in a meticulous and time-consuming approach, Wightman paints its area, masterfully combining a unique color palette with loaded texture to dizzying result. Wightman’s exclusive collaging strategy is equivalent to marquetry, still his mechanical precision hides the hand-built craft of his operate.

Clear traces slice throughout erratic wallpaper textures as the tactile nature of the medium is juxtaposed with the work’s peculiar geometry. The when common swirls of dwelling-space wallpaper designs are re-contextualised as the crevices of mountains bumpy spirals develop into ravines and glaciers established in opposition to lakes and skies of unattainable vibrant colour.

The titles of Wightman’s imagined peaks are influenced by his wide curiosity in mythology, faith, music, and literature. Each individual identify evokes beauty and ability, a landmark in their fictional planet, speaking to a feeling of each familiarity and fiction – whereby the vistas come to be partly believable, but also completely unlocatable. Untethered from sights uncovered in our authentic world, Wightman’s landscapes existing an imaginary space, free of charge from geographical constraints.

Placed front and centre, our gaze is drawn in beyond the textured surfaces, deep into and past each individual layer of the scene that stretches out higher than and all-around us. The chic stillness presents a contemplative quality to the performs and we are faced with the mountain as a strong equal within a dreamlike realm abundant in color and texture, wherever abstraction and fact contest and converge.

©2022 David Wightman