Samuel Bassett – From Wood and Leather Boots
Developing a distinctive voice by diving head first into auto-biography, Bassett's works catalogue his day to day life with honesty, humour and pathos. This auto-biographic approach to painting leads Bassett to work in a figurative manner, making the figures in his painting an allegory to his life. Further themes in Bassett's art are of boats and fisherman as a reference to the traditions of his home town, St. Ives, as well as to his family background, and to contemporary leisure life. Questions about how our world is changing and how we place ourselves in-between the past and the future are raised.
Galerie Kornfeld is pleased to present the first exhibition of new and recent work by British artist Samuel Bassett in Germany.
Developing a distinctive voice by diving head first into autobiography, Bassett’s works catalogue his day-to-day life with honesty, humour, and pathos. This autobiographic approach to painting leads Bassett to work in a figurative manner, making the figures in his paintings allegories of his life. Further themes in Bassett’s art include boats and fishermen, referencing the traditions of his hometown St. Ives, as well as his family background and contemporary leisure life. Questions about how our world is changing and how we place ourselves between the past and the future are repeatedly raised.
Often in Bassett’s paintings, a central figure is depicted as interacting with another form of matter—this may be paint, another figure, or an abstract shape. This “matter” acts as a connection to abstraction and introduces another subject into these paintings: paint itself. Flat painted shapes determine and edit spatial relationships in Bassett’s work. Planes of colour create distinctions between the reality of the figures and the backgrounds from which the figures struggle to emerge. Hidden within layers of paint in the backgrounds are familial figures, haunting the memories and realities of the scenes depicted.
Formally, the works pull their figurative subjects into a sea of marks and abstracted gestures, referencing the bravado of Abstract Expressionist painters such as Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg. With a similar commitment to expressions of profound emotion, writer William Cook remarks on Bassett:
“He speaks from the heart about the things that move and trouble him. He paints the language of dreams and memory. His paintings describe his hopes and fears. His work is … about the way he feels about the world.”
Born in 1982 in Cornwall, UK, Samuel Bassett studied in Bournemouth and lived in London for a short period before relocating to his hometown of St. Ives to focus on his art. There, he continues to work in the prestigious Porthmeor Studios, located above his grandfather’s former fishing-net loft. The studios were previously occupied by artists including Francis Bacon, Ben Nicholson, and Patrick Heron, key figures of the St. Ives Modernists.
St. Ives has been the Bassett family’s home since 1695. The artistic traditions of the town—and of his family, fishermen by trade but artists at heart—continue to influence his artistic development, providing both physical and emotional grounding for his work.
Bassett’s work has been widely exhibited, including a solo presentation at START at the Saatchi Gallery in London, group exhibitions at Falmouth Art Gallery and Newlyn Exchange Museum (UK), and three solo exhibitions at Anima-Mundi in St. Ives. His works are held in collections worldwide, including the Tremenheere Sculpture Park, where they are permanently installed alongside works by James Turrell, Kishio Suga, Richard Long, and David Nash. Bassett’s work has been featured in numerous publications, including Christie’s Magazine and The New York Post.
After successfully presenting the artist at Code Art Fair in Copenhagen earlier this year, Galerie Kornfeld will show Samuel Bassett at the Untitled Art Fair in Miami.