Richard Patterson | Ged Quinn
Private View: 24 May 2018
Exhibition dates: 25 May – 14 July 2018
Curated by Catherine Loewe
Galleria Mucciaccia
Largo della Fontanella di Borghese 89
Rome, Italy
Galleria Mucciaccia is delighted to present an exhibition featuring the work of two highly acclaimed British artists Richard Patterson and Ged Quinn showing for the first time together in Rome. The exhibition presents an overview from across their respective oeuvres up to the present day. Patterson and Quinn were both born in 1963 in the UK and emerged during the pivotal period in late 1980’s London when British art gained international recognition. This era represented a paradigm shift, characterized by the mixed-media conceptual art prevalent at the time but also by a sense of emancipation from both the conventions of postmodernist doctrine and the established hierarchies of the art world. The work of Patterson and Quinn can be seen as having its roots within this milieu - the multi-layered approach to source material and process, the inclination towards appropriation and the resurgence of the polemics of painting. In this context Patterson and Quinn can be distinguished by their resolute exploration of the power of the image and the possibilities inherent in the medium of painting.
Both artists studied in London, Quinn at the Slade, continuing his studies in Germany and the Netherlands before moving to rural Cornwall in the UK and Patterson at Goldsmiths, subsequently leaving London for New York and Dallas in the USA. Over three decades of artistic practice, Patterson and Quinn have refined their creative vision and technical brilliance to forge distinctive interpretations that reflect both a profound personal and cultural consciousness. Both employ a multitude of forms, idioms and genres, the disparate and contradictory elements of which might appear random, but are in fact carefully extracted and painstakingly rendered. We are visually hooked from the first moment by the sheer bravura of the work – whether epic or tiny, abstract or photorealistic, but no matter how seductive the painted surface, this is far from complacent art. Assimilating in parallel the enduring dialectic between figuration and abstraction, past and present, fact and fiction, sacred and profane, high and popular culture, this exhibition establishes a compelling dialogue between these two renowned artists.