LONDON.- Shizaru announces POUR, an exhibition of works by New York based artist Holton Rower. The unprecedented exhibition invites viewers to experience first-hand the artist’s vertiginous vision, showcasing his acclaimed Pour Paintings in the United Kingdom for the very first time.
The works begin their lives as an assembly line of several hundred individual cups of acrylic paint. After constructing a specialised platform, the paints are poured one by one in meticulous succession, timed perfectly so their viscosity allows a flawless cascade of colour. Determined to find their own paths, each cup of paint flows like lava across the geometric constructions, and is thwarted by specially built Intention Dams that obstruct the flowing paths.
Within each pour painting, which consists of up to 50 gallons of paint, Rower toys with intent and outcome that stems from the precarious relationship between artistic manipulation and chance. Often resembling a fossilised form of acidulous colour, his abstract creations recall the psychedelic art of the 1960s and it’s realm of the surreal.
The resultant images echo undulating coastlines frozen in time, ready to begin flowing again at any moment. The surface detail has a captivating allure, forcing the viewer to yo-yo between close up examination and contemplation from afar. One wants to examine each colour individually, whilst grappling with the overall effect of such colour clashes.
Titles such as ‘Free Kittens’ and ‘More Exciting Lesbian Shit’ encompass a magnitude of ideas and thought processes, which in their variety and obscurity lend guidance to our own unique interpretation of the pieces. Evocative of surrealist automatism, the titles describe random objects, actions or phrases which make sense in a dream or trance like world, whereupon the nonsensical and the bizarre become commonplace.
Also included in this exhibition is a selection of Heads – globules of layered paint carved away to reveal an anthropomorphic vision of artistic and hallucinogenic perception. Made completely out of hardened paint, the totem-like sculptures are both distinguished and comical at once, commanding veneration and intrigue in a sharp juxtaposition.
Born in 1962, Holton Rower currently lives in Brooklyn Heights with his studio located in Lower Manhattan. Rower expresses a fascination in the substance of the various materials he uses particularly in his 'Pour' paintings. Since graduating from the Putney School, Holton Rower has exhibited internationally, including Pace Gallery, New York; The Hole Gallery, New York; Jay Grimm Gallery, New York; Galerie Maeght, Paris; Galerie 6, Switzerland; Galeria Estudio Fuentes, Madrid and Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich.
