Exhibition · Ben Brown Fine Arts · London
‘I was still a student in London … feeling the ignominy of being a figurative painter the year after Freeze. If one was painting then it was assumed that it was out of ignorance or from a stubborn refusal to notice that the world had changed.’ – Cecily Brown In ’90s Britain, the art world was dominated by the conceptual hegemony of the YBA movement. Hirst, Emin, Whiteread, Lucas and their peers commanded tabloid headlines and museum surveys alike with their readymades and installations. Surface Tension examines how a small group of British painters survived, and even flourished, in this climate. They are each distinctive and important voices, yet no less the product of their age. Working apart, they arrived at strikingly common ground: a shared preoccupation with surface, gesture and the physical act of painting. To consider this group as an ensemble is to understand something of the cultural pressures, even siege mentality, that forged the strength of their work. Reports of the death of painting were, as ever, greatly exaggerated.