Tony Bevan: Epistrophies and Heads
'When you paint and you do work a lot with feeling, you don’t question certain things…Things happen as you’re working and then its like you’re feeling your way along through the whole work process.'
Ben Brown Fine Arts is proud to present Epistrophies and Heads「格木致知」, an exhibition of recent paintings by British artist Tony Bevan, at the Hong Kong gallery. This will mark the artist's eleventh show with Ben Brown Fine Arts and fifth show at the Hong Kong gallery. The exhibition introduces Bevan's latest series, Epistrophies, in which the artist explores the rhythmic, abstract, infinite possibilities inspired by a singular tree which he encountered near his home over many winters. The Epistrophies works will be presented alongside Bevan's iconic Heads paintings, with which he has similarly taken on a looser, more abstracted approach as this series progresses. Exhibited together, the repetitive forms and complex structures of these works offer a meditation and myriad associations to the viewer, suggestive of the human form and its intricate internal, external and psychological systems.
Bevan's aesthetic can be distinguished by his exclusive use of charcoal and self-produced acrylic paints in a typically restrained palette of black, ochre and red. Bevan vigorously applies his pure acrylic pigments and charcoal directly onto raw canvas or paper laid down on the floor of his studio, preserving the splinters and dust of the charcoal and powdery pigments on the surface of his works, resulting in a dynamic tactility and insight into his working method. Bevan infuses all of his subjects - whether heads, architectural structures, trees or stones - with a life force and intensity that transcend their original representation.
