VIRTUAL EXHIBITION : URBAN MEMORIES BY GREGORY WATIN AT KAHN GALLERY
Urban Memories | Virtual Exhibition | Virtual Gallery
KAHN GALLERY
Queen’s Parade, London, NW2 5HT
Gregory Watin was born in 1976 in France, where he still lives and works. He is internationally recognised for the uniqueness of his urban style and his work has been shown in numerous exhibitions across Europe and the USA for the last 15 years.
Using pictures as a sketch, he works by immersing himself in all things that give strength to his urban landscapes. His work is a reflection on the marks left by time on the urban structures and he incorporates these elements in his pictures in order to build up an atmosphere. He appropriates the different locations he uses as subjects and creates his very own universe around them, thus reviving them. The onlooker is made to feel the atmosphere of a place, decayed yet revived, through the different authentic elements inlaid in the painting such as pieces of woods, cardboard or plexiglas, enhanced with bright colours.
Urban Memories | Kahn Gallery London | Virtual Exhibition | Virtual Gallery
Gregory’s work also conveys a notion of urgency, as if the artist was constantly feeling the urge to fix his ideas on the canvas lest they should get away. This is visible in the apparently quick effect produced by his visible gestures on the canvas, and the seemingly patchy character of his collages. His contemporary poetry is created from daily material, his inspiration oozing directly from the town and the people who inhabit it. As he says it himself : ‘This urbanity made of anything is not sad or doomed, if you look at it closely, it is also coloured and rhythmic.’
In the artist’s own words, we could ask ’What remains of us? Once engulfed in this bulimic urbanity? Some painting on a wall, a doodle we made when we were five, a song by Michael Jackson. Nothing noble or pure, nothing serious either, I have stopped looking for a tormented and distressed way of expression in painting. I prefer finding some lightness, humour and humanity in each lost object. I have created my contemporary poetry from daily material, from the town, the people. This urbanity made of anything is not sad or doomed , if you look at it closely, it's also coloured and rhythmic " ... Grégory
And by looking at his paintings, this is indeed what we find.
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