Artists

Joshua Raz

Press release

Larsen / Warner is thrilled to present Crowding the Brink, a solo exhibition of new paintings by British artist Joshua Raz (b. 1993, UK) This is the artists first exhibition with the gallery and his first in Scandinavia. In Crowding the Brink, the paintings imagine how landscapes and those of us who cross them respond when their verges become freighted with significance. Raz has developed an expressive form of landscape painting that pays homage to, builds on, challenges and expands the canonical Western landscape tradition. Much like contemporary painters such as Michael Armitage, Peter Doig and Andrew Cranston, Raz creates paintings whose foundations lie in post impressionistic painting but are not beholden to trends or tastes, instead, Raz's sumptuous canvases feel wholly of our time. By overlaying thin layers of diluted oil Raz elegantly manages to create a surface that almost glows. Luminous oranges and yellows pulsate beside shadowy swathes of aubergine purples and greens. With each stroke of the brush with paint marks carefully left, familiar references begin to appear; The shimmer of moonlight on water, a small boat swaying in the sea breeze or figures, hunched from the icy cold, walking upon an frozen lake. When viewing these works we cannot help but utilise our own experiences in similar landscapes, pulling on unreliable memories and desired futures. "I use lines and geometrics to squeeze the composition and bridge those spaces between a figure and some aspect of the landscape, to imply that they're both equally reliant, they are both valuable, and there's a reciprocal relationship between the two." The paintings are peopled with coarse figures gravitating to the points at which the ground ends, often following its network of paths, creeks and gullies. In seeking the brink, they glimpse the boundless plane that lies beyond it, where vessels are suspended in varying states of flight. Boats straddle the horizon, or are grounded on the shore, or are depicted in the moments before being boarded. The paintings express a desire for our landscapes to rejoin the oceans and skies in their immensity. Arriving at each precipice, their subjects reach a place from where they may take flight, or are otherwise reminded of their flightlessness.