CAPTAGON STATE
New paintings by CHRIS ANTHEM
4th - 26th March 2016
Lane House Arts Gallery, Bath
In a new season of artist shows, Lane House Arts hands the space over to British painter Chris Anthem.
Captagon State presents Chris’s recent work from Beirut. The paintings encompass a diverse aesthetic featuring baroque cherubim, adopting African tribal markings seen en route, and with a dose of Middle East politics to ground it. Following his previous use of non-traditional materials (dress-pattern paper, retail bags, cow hides) these recent works are painted on vibrant stripy canvas awnings from the tower blocks of Beirut.
Subtly constructed with immaculate attention to the dynamics of paint, colour and surface; they are an affirmation of life in the face of adverse geographical conditions and conflict.
The title of the series "First We Kill Them, Then We Surround Them, Then We Negotiate" came from something that was said to my wife by a rebel commander in South Sudan, a drunken joke, a sinister humour.
The series was originally conceived for Joust, Anthem’s first solo exhibition in Lebanon in 2014, an overview of work created in Lebanon and Ethiopia since 2012; work whose fragile vision spans trans-historical and global styles, Painting on bags from the retail chain Zara, symbolises amnaesiac consumerism that mistakes globalisation for cosmopolitanism.
However, it is the more intimate qualities of the materials used in the paintings that find resonance with the viewer – their weight, rawness or perceived fragility. Just as in the mock combat of a joust, where all the theatricality of the banners, coats of arms, filigreed armour and skill of horsemanship belie the inherent vulnerability of the combatant, it is this human aspect of the work that ultimately breathes through the varnish of the paint’s surface. In this way the paintings show their bruises and scars, emitting a sensitive and tender violence which is unsettling in the context of their aesthetic armour.
Chris Anthem is a British painter working between the UK, Lebanon and Sudan. Born in the southwest in 1976, he studied at Liverpool and the Slade School of Fine Art, London.
Read more about the artist here
Liberate the Remains of the Thing That Was Not There oil on canvas 2015 110 x 80cm SOLD
UTTER oil on canvas 2016 136cm x 110cm £3,500
