Ben Brown Fine Arts presents Epistrophies and Heads, an exhibition of recent paintings by British artist Tony Bevan, at their London gallery.
Running until 13th of January 2024, this will be Bevan’s twelfth exhibition with the gallery marking the second part of their comprehensive exhibition, following the earlier works from this series on view at their Hong Kong gallery through September to November 2023.
The exhibition showcases Bevan’s latest series, Epistrophies, in which the artist explores the rhythmic, abstract, infinite possibilities inspired by a singular motif, a tree, which he encountered near his home over many winters.
These works will be presented alongside Bevan’s Heads paintings, with which he has taken on a looser, more abstract 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.
Over the last fifty years, Bevan has emerged as one of Britain’s foremost figurative painters. Bevan’s work has explored a cohesive yet dynamic evolution of thematic investigations. His works often feature trees, landscapes, architectural constructions and heads.
The Epistrophies series focuses on the profoundly rhythmic, anthropomorphic, and expressive characteristics of a leafless tree that Bevan closely studied near his home throughout several seasons. Returning to his studio to work from memory, he would transmute the emotions and impressions exuded by the tree into endless iterations.
Adopting a term commonly associated with poetry, rhetoric and rhythm, each Epistrophe – or each version of the tree – becomes a lyrical sequence, in which forms are constantly growing, reforming, repeating and returning to their origins. In Epistrophy Red White (PC2218), 2022, twisting curvatures of densely painted branches fan out like neural pathways as the tree hovers over a background of powdery, diffused pigment.
Epistrophy Grey White (PC2213), 2022, is an ethereal depiction of the tree in soft grisaille tones and washes of white. Seen collectively, the trees exude vitality, ‘epistrophy’ not only referring to the literary and rhetorical effects of repetition, but also referencing the eponymous jazz standard composed in the 1940s by Thelonious Monk.
Tony Bevan: Epistrophies and Heads
Dates: 23 November 2023 – 13 January 2024
Location: Ben Brown Fine Arts London, 12 Brook’s Mews, London W1K 4DG
www.benbrownfinearts.com
