Unskilled Worker
When You're a Boy
Daniel Cooney Fine Art, Santa Fe
September 12 – October 26, 2024
Daniel Cooney Fine Art presents the debut US exhibition by Unskilled Worker titled When You’re a Boy. The exhibition consists of 20 intimate portraits of young men, all painted in 2024 and never before seen. The exhibition marks a transition back to single figures, renewing the stillness and loose line of the artist’s early work.
Unskilled Worker has received great renown for her densely narrative, large-scale work that has garnered fans across the globe. Since the early days of her practice, she has created the “boys” between larger projects as “a washing away, a deep breath”, a place to center herself and create renewed energy. Over the years they have become a vital part of her creative process and until now have never been exhibited as a group.
The portraits are sometimes a direct reference to an individual that inspires the artist and sometimes an amalgam of various people, both real and imagined. The artist states, “The common denominator is surely me. I’m not certain it’s possible to paint a face and leave myself behind. In a way they connect to my story.”, while we see a portrait of a young man, we are looking deeply at the artist herself. The portraits are undeniably highly emotional and intensely felt by the artist and the viewer alike.
Unskilled Worker is the moniker assumed by Helen Downie, a London based artist, best known for her idiosyncratic and expressive style of painting. Her paintings have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Dazed, Forbes, Creative Review and i-D. Her work is collected internationally and have been exhibited at galleries across the world including London, Hong Kong, Seoul, Milan, Madrid, Tokyo and Shanghai.
Unskilled Workers paintings have been exhibited at the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai. In 2016, a specially commissioned portrait by the artist was featured as a limited-edition cover of Bazaar Art with six leading contemporary female artists. Unskilled Worker collaborated with Gucci in 2017 by launching a 40-piece collection featuring her artwork.
DANIEL COONEY FINE ART
1600 Lena Street, Santa Fe, NM 87505
