Billy Childish @ Lehmann Maupin, Seoul - wolves, sunsets and the self

Billy Childish: wolves, sunsets and the self
Lehmann Maupin, Seoul
April 23 – May 30, 2020

Lehmann Maupin presents an exhibition of new paintings by Billy Childish. The prolific British painter, musician, and writer has produced hundreds of albums of music and dozens of volumes of fiction and poetry. For his sixth exhibition with the gallery, and his first with Lehmann Maupin in Korea, Billy Childish has created a body of work emblematic of his “radical traditionalist” approach. Pulling from themes found throughout art history—a verdant landscape, a sunset, a still life—Billy Childish presents intensely personal vignettes that feel archetypical, vibrating with the kinetic energy of a moment lived.

While working in a state of flow is essential to the creative process of any artist, for Billy Childish this state represents the entirety of artistic production. Working intuitively and quickly, his highly kinetic paintings are mostly created in a single session without any revision. His style is often compared to the expressionist painters of the late 19th/early 20th century, such as Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch, but for Billy Childish it is the embodiment of these artists’ spiritual and creative integrity, and how this informed their roles within society, that is most compelling. An unabashed universalist, Billy Childish considers artistry to be the inheritance of every human being, a method to capture the expressive impulse and visualize the powerful lure of beauty.

Utterly non-ironic and vividly familiar, a Billy Childish painting can be interpreted the way one might interpret a dream. In these paintings, Billy Childish presents a series of landscapes ranging from an idyllic sunset to an ominously clouded sky. Also included is a still life of a vase of flowers and a wolf stalking its prey. All of these can be thought of as signifiers for states of being or emotions legible in the form of a landscape. For the artist, the conceptual should never replace the humanistic—Billy Childish states “I make a picture in the same way a child does—something ‘out there’ interests me. Making a painting of that ‘something’ then joins me with the universal creator/creation in a more intent way than just being an observer.”

BILLY CHILDISH (b. 1959, Chatham, Kent, United Kingdom; lives and works in Rochester/Chatham, Kent) attended Medway College of Design, Kent in 1977 and Saint Martin’s School of Art, London in 1978. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at Rochester Art Gallery, Kent, United Kingdom (2016); Opelvillen Rüsselsheim, Frankfurt, Germany (2016); White Columns, New York, NY (2010); and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, United Kingdom (2010). Select group exhibitions featuring his work include BILLY CHILDISH, HARRY ADAMS and EDGEWORTH JOHNSTONE: Our Friend Larionov, Pushkin House, London, United Kingdom (2014); Paintings Sweet Paintings, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (2014); and British Art Show 5, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland (2000). Billy Childish has written and published five novels and more than 40 volumes of poetry, and recorded more than 150 LPs.

LEHMANN MAUPIN
74-18, Yulgok-ro 3-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul
lehmannmaupin.com

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