A Painting Cycle – Christopher Orr
Christopher Orr, Mysterium Magnum, 2008. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, Mysterium Magnum, 2008. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, Silver Branch, 2009. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, A Painting Cycle. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, A Painting Cycle. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, A Painting Cycle. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, A Painting Cycle. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, Nocturne, 2007. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, Untitled (The Heads), 2007. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Christopher Orr, From Beyond, 2007. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni
April 5th - 17th, 2012
Opening April 5th, 2012 from 6.30pm
Nomas Foundation, viale Somalia 33, Rome
On the occasion of the third episode of A painting cycle, on Thursday 5 April Nomas Foundation hosts the Scottish artist Christopher Orr. Through portraits of people from the past and landscapes suspended between reality and illusion, the artist represents emotional worlds, produce hypnothical juxtapositions and suggests a space beyond the representations. Christopher Orr will be in conversation with John Slyce, writer, critic and lecturer based in London, MA tutor and Research Tutor in Painting at the Royal College of Art. He has written for many of the major art magazines and journals and contributed catalogue essays on the work of artist such as Gillian Wearing, Allen Ruppersberg and Rodney Graham.
After A Performance Cycle (2010) and A Film Cycle (2011), again this spring Nomas Foundation's programme will be marked by a project taking the form of a cycle as a mode of presentation that aims to explore specific languages within art declined in their different nuances and forms.
A Painting Cycle reflects on painting, a language that the public tipically identifies as art tout court and that is today, increasingly gaining space, attention and momentum.
What does painting mean today? How did it change - if it has - in dialogue with the variety of media that in the past century artists have adopted? Is it still possible to speak about style, technique or use the term ‘representation’? With which awareness is painting addressed at the present moment?
These and many more are the themes of A Painting Cycle, which aims to confront the public with a dialectic of positions on a specific language rather than with a solution.
Every two weeks from March 8, chapter after chapter, Nomas Foundation becomes a picture gallery hosting conversations, workshops and a thematic library open to the public.
Through a selection of works, the five invited artists, offer different positions of the interpretation of painting, addressing specific aspects and key terms that will be discussed in a public conversation with an art critic invited by them.
As part of their presentation, the artists have been asked to indicate an art work /monument of the city that has had a particular influence within her or his artistic research, all of them together drawing a virtual map of the cultural heritage inscribed in the city of Rome.
In addition to this, A Painting Cycle is accompanied by a workshop lead by artist Alessandro Sarra, which intertwines with the exhibition programme and constitutes yet another point of view on what painting means today. The workshop Progettare un cielo offers a visionary approach through which to consider the very fabric of painting, and is organized in ten weekly appointments abridging Nomas Foundation, the artist’s studio, and some museums of Rome. The material produced during the workshop will be posted regularly on Nomas’ website.
Christopher Orr, born in Scotland in 1967, lives and works in London. He attended the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, of Dundee in Scotland and obtained an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in London.
Solo exhibitions (selected): Hauser & Wirth, Zurich; Chris Orr, Switzerland ArtSway, Hampshire (2010); Strong to Heal, IBID PROJECTS, London (2009); Nyehaus, New York (2008); Hauser & Wirth, Zurich; Elsewhere Begins Here, IBID PROJECTS, London (2007); Sister, Los Angeles; Before and After Science, Arndt & Partner, Berlin (2005); Of Both Worlds, IBID PROJECTS, London (2004); Future Natural, Cohan Leslie and Browne, New York; In Between days, IBRID PROJECTS, London (2003).
Group exhibitions (selected): ArtSway at the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, IT (2011); The Fire Part of Fire, The Outbye Gallery, Fife, UK (2011); No New Thing Under the Sun, Royal Academy of Arts, London; BigMinis, CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain, Bordeaux (2010); We’re Moving, Royal College of Art Painting Department, London; Christopher Orr & J. Parker Valentine & Rezi van Lankveld, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, The Front Room, St. Louis (2009); Salon, The Cartin Collection at Ars Libri, Boston (2008); Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2007); Tate Triennial 2006, Tate Britain, London (2006).
Media partner: CURA