Marlborough is pleased to present Cut Flowers, the gallery's second solo exhibition by London-based artist Ansel Krut. Krut has created a tightly focused group of new still life paintings depicting flowers in unusual, sometimes anthropomorphized vases.
Painted from memory, in oil and fast-drying enamel, without the artist’s customary preparatory watercolor study, these new works signal a new approach in the artist’s ever-evolving investigation of painting. While the immediacy of technique (and its implicit acknowledgement of fleeting time) may be new, many of Krut’s signature peculiarities are reassuringly present. The handling of figure/ground relationships, color and line, and a pervasive sense of oddity are all classic Krut, however a newly elegiac quality inherent in the subject matter that tempers some of his more strident eccentricities presides in this new body of work.
Flower paintings, as a genre, have a long and checkered history, and Krut’s ability to inject his peculiar melancholy humanity into a well-worn subject, is testament to our recurrent need for this type of imagery, and the singularity and the clarity of his voice.
Works
