Cedric Christie’s Massive Retrospective – Up To Now will be presented at the Sidney Cooper Gallery. It is actually a ‘mini’-retrospective of serial works by this well respected British sculptor. The exhibition brings together Christie’s two major fascinations in sculpture – the restrained and colourful language of serial minimalism, and, by contrast, the Duchampian humour of pop-art typography.
Furthermore, as a result of an exciting new collaboration with Jealous Gallery, the exhibition also launches two series of screenprints by Cedric Christie, reflecting the two of these languages.
Serial minimalism works include the ‘Democracy’ series (2014) and ‘It’s Your Move’ (2013), both of which use short lengths of steel tube and a serial progression of colour. The new ‘Colour’ series of 10 screenprints, made with Jealous Gallery, abstracts a sculptural form into a graphic image, which is manipulated to progress through a total of ten colour combinations. The titles of the prints are inspired by a film short (Scottish Painters, 1959) made by Ken Russell for the BBC Monitor series Colquhoun & MacBryde, in which Robert MacBryde describes the yellow of a fruit in a still life as ‘screaming yellow’. They are immaculately presented in an edition of 12.
The ‘Icons’ lightbox series was first exhibited at Galerie Frederic Desimpel, Brussels in 2007. ‘Icons’ appropriates commercial motoring graphics, using second hand commercial lightboxes and replacing the company logos with the names of artists. Indeed, also in 2007, Christie took a fleet of cars to Documenta, using car stickers using these graphics to represent all the artists who had exhibited at Documenta. The cars were later crushed and the decorated twisted bits of metal cut out of them to form ‘Medals’, although one crushed car remained whole and became ‘Pink Painting’. In 2009, the Icon series was extended for ‘Love Me Or Fuck Me’ (Flowers Gallery). The second set of screen prints therefore comprises of three typographical screenprints based on Christie’s iconic lightbox series. Exhibited alongside a large selection of the lightboxes, and employing their unusual sizing, ‘Picasso’, ‘Malevich’ & ‘Richter’ are available in an edition of 50.
Cedric Christie lives and works in London. His work is a critical appraisal of colour and modernism as well as the exploration of the journey to form and meaning. After completing an apprenticeship in welding, Cedric used his knowledge of metal to make sculptures, which started the journey of his investigation of art. His signature artworks, noted for their use of steel, scaffolding tube, snooker balls, cars, chalk lines, graphic text and the commercial fabrication process, have resulted in solo shows and public art commissions both in the UK and internationally in Brussels, Antwerp and New York. Cedric has had three solo shows and curated a further two with Flowers Gallery and his work is collected widely, notably in the collections of Anita Zabludowicz, David Roberts, Unilever, Derwent Valley Holdings. www.cedricchristie.com
CEDRIC CHRISTIE: Massive Retrospective – Up To Now 17 April – 16 May Private View 16 April 6- 8pm
exhibition officially opened by Gavin Turk 6.30pm Sidney Cooper Gallery, St Peter’s Street, Canterbury CT1 2BQ