V1 GALLERY PROUDLY PRESENTS
Wolves Wait At Your Door
An exhibition by John Copeland
OPENING: FRIDAY APRIL 08. 2016. TIME: 17.00 - 22.00
EXHIBITION PERIOD: APRIL 09 – MAY 07. 2016.
Wolves Wait At Your Door. 13 new paintings and a series of 16 new drawings await the beholder. Rarely are you confronted by a painting, quite often you have the privilege of being the removed spectator. In Copeland’s new body of work you are confronted directly by his subjects, they gaze at you, take you in, measure you. There is the uneasy sense of intrusion - of opening the wrong door at the right time. Copeland’s work has always been concerned with the act of looking, but never as directly as in Wolves Wait At Your Door.
The paintings vibrate between figuration and abstraction, bold and fragmented, precise and loose. Copeland’s compositions are complex; mirrored and distorted characters, paintings within paintings, hard lines slicing and dividing the canvas, layers upon layers of oil paint, abstractions sprouting from figurative elements. They challenge both eye and mind, and place you in an uncanny state somewhere in the murky waters between the visceral and the mythical. Copeland’s subjects seem strong, confident, unfazed, free to do and roam. As you spend time with this group of characters a feeling of empowerment arise. Copeland’s practice and subject matter align with you.
John Copeland b. 1976 lives and works in New York. He has developed a distinct painterly style that is based in the tradition of abstract expressionism, neo-expressionism and bad painting (as defined by Marcia Tucker). He keeps exploring the possibilities of painting in an
earnest and admirable way. Wolves Wait At Your Door is John Copeland’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.
