Richard Stone

Visit: Richard Stone website

2012 - work shown recently as a solo exhibition: a walk at dusk and dawn, at Burgh House, London.

The figure and landscape were taken as classical reference points but presented as something altogether different. Part apocalyptic, part sublime, cloaked figures faced outwards towards landscapes they couldn't see whilst landscapes were envisaged as disintegrating, reforming as new transient vistas.

From Caspar David Friedrich's 'a walk at dusk' through references to Turner, vanitas and superheroes, the exhibition included visually delicate erased antique paintings and figures slowly engulfed in ghostly and seductive auras of amorphous wax.

The surfaces of the paintings were fractured and partly sanded away to reveal delicately coloured carcass planes or bones of the original paintings now left floating on the surfaces. With the original landscapes now barely visible, new landscapes were revealed instead, balanced precariously between former representation and pure conceptual abstraction.

Adopting traditionally heroic poses the accompanying figures had their features smoothed out, these once empty vessels cast as historical portraits or caricatures became plinths or supports for new sculptural forms, together through process new sculptures were revealed suggestive of a more contemporary anti-portraiture.