Wednesday 14 April 18:00 - 21:00

Gallery 46
46 Ashfield Street
London
E1 2AJ

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THE FIRST SWING OF THE BAT | Private View - Wednesday 14th April 2021

Performing & Visual Arts

The first swing of the bat pulls together a broad collection of language and conceptual framework.

The first swing of the bat pulls together a broad collection of language and conceptual framework, each artist bringing a distinct language to the show. The exhibiting artists primarily work with paint, sculpture, collage, drawing and printmaking also play in a role. Certain types of realism hover at the precipice of abstraction, amalgamations of the unreal and hyperreal collide, there is tension sought between these languages and their relationship to time. There are slight overlaps of interest but for the most part each artists agenda is solitary, ten islands to visit. The ambition of this show is to present an ariel view of painting now. History ebbs through the show, folkloric, medieval narratives, whether the mythical is addressed in a graphic, digital language or sensual formalism, the everyday physically buried in gesture or meticulously considered in naturalistic tendencies.

A low hum, the sun hanging high, a full carpark, a seemingly endless sea of radio fuzz, groggy eyes, long drives, tens of thousands of pilgrimages, collective expectations and escape.

The first swing of the bat alludes to a tight grip, bat in hand, and the moments before the batter swings, the tension, suspense and release of these nanoseconds. The ritualistic nature of honing skills in anticipation of performance and the zones occupied in two states is a thread not dissimilar to that found in any studio. The palpable, tangible excitement of a long awaited event, a thread reproduced endlessly in cinema and literature. The introduction to Don Delilloโ€™s Underworld and Takeshi Kitanoโ€™s Boiling Point each contributed to the conception of the show. Delilloโ€™s minute description of the excitement coupled with Kitanoโ€™s absurd nostalgic odyssey, subverting the banal, unrolling untold events. Visual equivalents have been sought to mirror the tension, malleability, elasticity and scale cited in Delillo and Kitanoโ€™s narratives.

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