Exhibition
Alex Gene Morrison Dark Matter - Charlie Smith (London)
CHARLIE SMITH london is delighted to present Alex Gene Morrison with his first London one person show
since 2006.
In this new collection Morrison employs a highly personalised language in order to engage with a universal
cosmology. Suspended delicately between representation and abstraction, forms advance and recede to
suggest an outer worldliness that is somehow beyond and even pre or post human. Morrison creates an interdimensional
realm that is at times enticing and other times foreboding. Complimentary and subtle colour
combinations might project stillness and harmony whilst abrasive, electric codes suggest the clinical, infirm or
incubatory.
But whilst Morrison maintains a stance of implication and illusiveness he still affirms a sapient presence by
means of absence or in suggesting transitory movement. A stone slab in an empty room tells us that
something was once here, most likely extinguished, and warns of an ultimate finality. Portals, gateways or
corridors convey a journey, a point of crossing over from one state to another. Human or sentient beings were
or are present in primitive or futuristic form.
Whilst nodding towards now retro futuristic film such as Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ or
Franklin J. Schaffner’s ‘Planet of the Apes’, both of 1968, Morrison also references 20th century abstract
painting. Glimpses of Kazimir Malevich, Ad Reinhardt or Peter Halley can be traced in Morrison’s layering of
form and colour. There is an acute awareness of the materiality of paint where subtle shifts in tone, texture
and direction of application combine to create spatial and perspectival shifts; and underpainting and
repainting bring our attention to the built surface. An inquiry into the equivocal, therefore, is underpinned by a
rigorous investigation into paint itself.
Biographical:
Born: 1975
Education: 2000 – 2002: MA in Painting, Royal College of Art; 1997 – 2000: BA (Hons) in Fine Art, City and Guilds of London Art School
Selected Exhibitions: 2010: The Term “Reality”, Paul Stolper, London; New British Painting, Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary,
Helsinki; 2009: The Future Can Wait, Old Truman Brewery, London; 2008: John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize 25, Walker Art
Gallery, Liverpool; 2007: Adrift (one person), The Fishmarket, Northampton; Nature and Society, Dubrovnik Museums, Croatia; 2006:
Vile Lure (one person), Rockwell Gallery, London; Artists Choice, Leisure Club Mogadishni, Copenhagen; 2005: Maji Jabii!! Fucking
Brilliant!!, Tokyo Wondersite, Tokyo; Hydrophobia, Zinger Presents, Tilburg; New London Kicks, Wooster Projects, New York; Faux
Realism, Royal Academy Pump House Gallery, London; The Darkest Hour, Leisure Club Mogadishni, Copenhagen; 2004: Search and
Destroy (one person), Rosy Wild Gallery, London; If You Go Down to the Woods Today, Rockwell Gallery, London; Uneven Surfaces,
temporarycontemporary, London; Zombie, Gallery Ude, Düsseldorf; Born Cry Eat Shit Fuck Die, Rockwell Gallery, London;
