HOTTEST
“The White Heat of Cold Water” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Hannah Barry Gallery, shared with permission
Time and Geography Dissolve in Otherworldly Landscapes by Sholto Blissett
January 10, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Encircled by light, water, or stone, the central subjects of Sholto Blissett’s oil paintings simultaneously highlight and defy our aesthetic understanding of “nature.” Drawing on the rich history of landscapes, from the Dutch Golden Age to 19th-century British paintings to the Hudson River School, the artist illuminates spiritual associations and the universality of the sun, moon, the elements, and the earth.
In his solo exhibition, Life in Deep Time, at Hannah Barry Gallery, Blissett’s large-scale works explore “the tenderness between natural architecture, ecological thought, human fantasy, and celestial forms of light and visibility,” says a statement.
“Creatures of the Flame I” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches
Blissett often employs classical architecture or historical references that create a kind of gulf or divide between the scene and the viewer, separating us from the scene by time, geography, and a sense of the unknown.
In his most recent works, architectural facades like grand palazzos or towering obelisks have been subtly replaced by the more organic forms of trees, caves, or boulders. We’re ushered into subterranean realms flooded with moonlight, suggesting a continuum of prehistory through to the future.
Blissett is fascinated by the scale of human existence. Think of the way you might feel peering out the window of an airplane and comprehending the magnitude of the world beneath you—how small you feel, and yet, how connected. Compared to millions-year-old caves, tectonic shifts, or dried sea beds, the time span of human existence reads as merely a speck within that timespan.
Almost portrait-like, Blissett centers trees, monuments, and natural phenomena in each composition, silhouetted in the light and framed by rock walls or foliage as if the landscape has transformed into a boundless stage.
“Vertigo” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches
The light itself—what it reveals or conceals—is a character unto itself, reminding us of the limitations of sight, and that outside of the two-dimensional format of the painting, we are always enveloped by our surroundings. Blissett suggests that the darkness continues around and behind us, too, reiterating our focus toward the light, toward comfort and knowledge.
Often more than six feet wide or nearly as tall, Blissett’s expansive scenes approach immersion. He “calls attention to our manufactured and shifting relationship between social constructions of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’—their cosmically entwined, spectral, and thorny coexistence,” the gallery says.
Life in Deep Time continues through February 8 in London, and a book published by Foolscap Editions to accompany the exhibition will be launched on January 25 with a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. The artist’s work is also on view in The Silver Cord at Huxley Parlour, which continues through January 18. Find more on Blissett’s website and Instagram.
“Borrowed Light” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches
“Ship of Fools II” (2022), oil and acrylic on canvas, 94 1/2 x 78 3/4 inches
“Creatures of the Flame II” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches
“World Maker II” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches
“Feral” (2023), oil and acrylic on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches
“World Maker I” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches
“Ship of Fools XII” (20220, oil and acrylic on canvas on board, 43 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches
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Art
History#birds
#paintingAugust 17, 2020
Grace Ebert“Black and part Black Birds in America: (Crow, Goldfinch)” (2020), acrylic on PVC panel, 27 7/8 x 24 3/4 inches. All images © Kerry James Marshall, courtesy of David Zwirner
Two new paintings by Kerry James Marshall feature a central crow that looms over a botanical backdrop. One or two birdhouses, which have entrances that are too small for the blackbirds to fit through, are perched on the leafy branches along with more petite species. Part of an ongoing series, the acrylic paintings are based on John James Audubon’s Birds of America, an archetypal text cataloging 435 life-size watercolors of avian creatures.
Marshall’s artworks provide a multivalent, counterhistory to conceptions of race in the United States. While Audubon is recognized widely for his contribution to ecology and natural history in America, his own background is conflicting. The ornithologist was born as Jean Rabin in Haiti to unmarried parents: his father was a white plantation owner, while his mother’s identity is not as well-documented. However, many people believe she was a Creole chambermaid who may have had a mixed racial heritage. When Audubon migrated to the United States in the 19th century, he changed his name and masked his potentially biracial background.
Throughout his life, the famous birdwatcher and artist both supported and actively participated in chattel slavery, enslaving and selling people throughout the early 1800s. Audubon, who passed as white, also sought out relationships with presidents James Harrison and Andrew Jackson to promote his studies. In 1976, though, the artist’s work was included by curator David C. Driskell in his exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art, which positioned Audubon within the Black arts canon.“Black and part Black Birds in America: (Grackle, Cardinal & Rose-breasted Grosbeak)” (2020), acrylic on PVC panel, 35 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches
Today, Marshall utilizes ornithologist’s studies as a way to consider the narratives around race in his series, Black and part Black Birds in America, which on view virtually through August 30 at David Zwirner. The Chicago-based artist paints large crows in chromatic black, which is composed entirely of dark reds, blues, or greens. Another smaller bird, like a goldfinch or cardinal, has the deep shade on its face or wings, evoking the one-drop rule, or the claim that one Black ancestor was enough to grant a relative that same identity.
Because Marshall forgoes actual black pigment when painting, he evidences that racial categories are simply a social construction rather than a biological fact. Similarly, the ambiguous titles of the series compare the classification of birds to that of people, utilizing the color to reference both the creatures’ feathers and human categorization of race. “None of us works in isolation. Nothing we do is disconnected from the social, political, economic, and cultural histories that trail behind us. The value of what we produce is determined by comparison with and in contrast to what our fellow citizens find engaging,” Marshall says.#birds
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