New Works
Royal College of Art, London
1st - 5th December 2015
curated by Diane Shiach
ALL ENQUIRIES:
E: info@williamfoyle.com
‘They are the opposite of portraiture in fact: each figure seeming to represent an idea of humanity, a multitude of individuals condensed into one – but rather than diluting their identity in favour of a generalisation, the artist manages to somehow deepen its intensity so that, even without any indentifying features, one has the impression of seeing into their soul.’ - Katherine Cole 2015
Photograph by Chris Dawes
Head of Eve I, 2013, 23 x 19 cm, Monotype| Private Collection
Essay by Katherine Cole
William Foyle’s new paintings – an impressively large collection, exhibited at the RCA – stick in one’s mind. They are figurative, but concerned more with the qualities of the paint and its ability to express certain indescribable truths than with precise detail. They are the opposite of portraiture in fact: each figure seeming to represent an idea of humanity, a multitude of individuals condensed into one – but rather than diluting their identity in
favour of a generalisation, the artist manages to somehow deepen its intensity so that, even without any indentifying features, one has the impression of seeing into their soul.
Head of Christ I, 2014, 50 x 40 cm, Oil on Canvas | Private Collection
Figure V, 2015 152 x 138 cm Oil on Canvas| Private Collection
The isolated form, head and torso defined in black and white, recalls the truncated figures of Egon Schiele and Giacometti; the colours are those of cave walls, as at Lascaux, uncovered from the shrouds of time, and speaking of a mysterious civilisation that we can never fully know.
The series of holocaust figures are haunting, ghostlike, monochrome the large scale canvases are predominantly black and the gallery low lit, so that one treads carefully in a tenebrous world of unspoken beauty and pain. Like Rothko’s Black Paintings there is a sense of existential desolation contained within the pigment itself, scraped back and layered, austere in tone but rich in texture. Some have a religious intensity that combines the symbolism of Munch’s ‘Madonna’ with a tragic vulnerability, as in ‘Figure IV’ (2015, below left), the naked form suggesting a Pieta.
Figure VII, 2015, 133 x 99cm, Oil on Canvas | For Sale
Figure II, 2015, 146 x 116 cm, Oil on Canvas | For Sale
Figure III, 2015, 104 x 107 cm, Oil on Canvas |Previously on Loan to The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow, Russia
Photograph by Chris Dawes
The figures or heads are scraped, scratched, smudged, half-erased, their forms at once emerging and disappearing into the shadows of the painting.
It is a powerful metaphor for both the unreliability of memory and the impossibility of knowing all of someone. In the more specific context of the holocaust, it also makes a powerful statement about the calculated erasure of an individual’s identity; the poor skeletal bodies still proclaim their personhood – full of dreams, fears, memories, gradually stripped away, and now unknowable. It is the more tragic for being portrayed in such a restrained and delicate way.
Head of Christ II, 2013, 51 x 40 cm, Oil on Canvas | Private Collection
Alongside the canvases are a number of monotypes and other portrait heads in oil and acrylic. Some reveal elements of Frank Auerbach – in the heavily layered self-portrait with its decisive, energetic brushwork – and others the elusive 1960s portraits of Gerhard Richter, based on snapshots then deliberately blurred (‘Head I’, 2015, top). Both artists sought different means to counter the knowledge that painting is an imprecise representation of reality and that the essential nature of subject we see remains mysterious. Foyle, like them, knows this and creates what are more interesting and more rewarding paintings for it.
Figure I, 2015, 146 x 115 cm, Oil on Canvas | For Sale
Figure II, 2014, 34 x 27 cm, monotype | Private Collection
Figure I, 2014, 34 x 27 cm, monotype | Private Collection
Photograph by Chris Dawes
The space at the Royal College of Art has been well selected and curated; each canvas is allowed the space it needs and together they resonate – a tribute to the strong thematic focus of the exhibition. The technical experimentation is fascinating to see, the style subtly changing, but with a confidence and skill that makes me eager to see more.
by Katherine Cole
Scottish Landscape, 2015, 213 x 91cm, Oil on Canvas | Private Collection
Figure XVI, 2015, 220 x 122 cm, Oil on Canvas | Private Collection
To request a PDF of available works and prices please click the button below