Galerie Kornfeld is delighted to announce an exhibition of works by Scottish artist Bruce McLean, one of the most important figures in British contemporary art. The presentation focuses on his experience over the past year, embracing spring colours and a return to nature in a new series entitled Minimal Interiors, alongside new ceramic works.
Nature and the universal unity of all matter are abiding themes in Bruce McLean’s work. However, these are not simple representations of nature. McLean regularly adds collage and hand-painted motifs to his works, and his monoprints are often produced on wood or other surfaces in addition to paper. With his aptitude for many different media, he employs formal and conventional artistic language while constantly challenging the traditions of art.
Allusive of his recent exploration of garden themes in the Future Garden works—based on the Spanish gardens familiar to the artist—the series Twig Arrangement in front of Garden Arrangement reveals McLean’s enduring interest in sculptural ideas. The sculptural has always been fundamental to his practice and led him to the series Vase with Twig Arrangement, depicting his ceramics placed within interior settings.
McLean’s paintings are formed from a multitude of techniques and materials. In the foreground, twig arrangements appear to reference the bold cut-out shapes of Henri Matisse, but the modern master’s act of laying colour on canvas is instead deconstructed and subverted. In one case, a piece of aluminium foil attached to the painting becomes a leaf or petal that drops onto the tabletop. A constant investigator, McLean examines the possibilities and qualities of reflected colour and light.
In addition, exceptional works from the series The Black Garden Paintings are presented at 69salon by Kornfeld.
Bruce McLean (born 1944) is a Scottish sculptor, performance artist, and painter. He was born in Glasgow and studied at the Glasgow School of Art (1961–1963) and Saint Martin’s School of Art, London (1963–1966), where he studied with Antony Caro and Phillip King. McLean later served as Head of Graduate Painting at The Slade School of Fine Art, London.
He has held numerous solo exhibitions, including at Tate Gallery, London; The Modern Art Gallery, Vienna; and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. His painting has received consistent critical acclaim, from winning the John Moores Painting Prize in 1985 to participation in the seminal exhibition A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy in 1981. His works are held in major public and private collections worldwide, including Tate Britain and the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the National Museum of Modern Art (Osaka), the Royal Museum of Scotland, the National Museum of Modern Art (Edinburgh), and the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Art (Japan). Bruce McLean lives and works in London.
