HAUNTED BY PARADISE

HAUNTED BY PARADISE | DAVID GARDNER

7th - 27th March 2024 

Presented in collaboration with Delphian Gallery

Opening reception Thursday 7th March 6.30-8.30pm

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“We should have learned from the grass, humble in its abundance, offering food and shelter wherever it spread. Instead, we stamped our feet like gods, marvelling at the life we made, imagining all of it to be ours.” Tishani Doshi - Species

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David Gardner (b. 1987) is a British artist whose hyper-saturated delicate artworks reference sexuality, spirituality, and a deep understanding of what it is to be human. The sun is a prominent feature of this body of work, its presence felt through the glow on flesh and the tips of leaves and stems. It radiates a warm, heavy saturated light throughout the images, an inner glow that shines through everything. The sun appears to have traversed each image, capturing at the zenith of its cycle before dipping toward the horizon. A passing of time is felt through each frame, the journey approaching its ultimate end. This sun seems as if it is about to explode, setting everything alight. A destructive boiling point is imminent, one that might reset the balance of the Earth and engender a new beginning. The eye is overwhelmed, the colours bold but never heavy-handed or excessive. Febrile, as if vibrating with explosive potential. The work is vibrant in both colour and form, and everything depicted glows as if lit from within. Using traditional mediums such as watercolour, gouache and egg tempera, Gardner lavishly paints these vibrant environments, in which the constricted human form is shown enveloped in lush wildness. Many of the works are painted on Taroni Silk which gives the works a smoothness and a slight translucence, and an evanescent feel to the works. The silk echoes the tenderness, vulnerability, and  strength of human flesh. Many of these works feature a solitary figure, surrounded by flora that exists both symbiotically and at odds to the presence of the human form. The figure is often cropped so closely that it is only one body part that is presented, and the surrounding plants grow over and through the statuesque flesh. The one single inspiration that gave birth to this entire body of work arose after David encountered the practice of the Modern Primitive performance artist, Fakir Musafar. Through intense body modifications Musafar seeks and encounters transcendental out-of-body states, recreating ancient rituals such as the Native American Indian Sun Dance where the flesh is pierced and suspended. This piercing of the flesh, a devotional ritual to something greater than oneself, is an ancient image that runs through many cultures in every part of the world - from the Hindu Kavadi processions to the image of Christ sacrificed and nailed to the cross. Whilst Gardner is not religious his religious schooling has imbued his work with certain iconography, both through the way the figures in his work are in a constant battle with the environment and in the way that their godlike beauty is not constrained by their turmoil. It is with delicacy and reverence that he handles these subjects, and the defiance of that beauty amidst the chaos imbues the work with a spiritual and otherworldly quality inherent in every gesture. The flesh, figures, and feet in the images are very present, and they occupy the full plane as if to escape (or transcend) beyond the perimeter of the canvas in search of liberation. They are also inexorably rooted to the Earth, albeit by seemingly violent means. On closer inspection however, the stem has grown slowly through the foot, the vines have wrapped and bound carefully around the form. The body and nature are recombining, entwining as if by divine necessity. Like a transformed Daphne trying to escape Apollo. The feet are the obedient  humble underdog of the body, and are what root us to the Earth. We find ourselves in a world where we are becoming disconnected to the natural world with dire consequences - a slow sustained annihilation. Hermaphroditic flowers such as dandelions and sunflowers exist as recurring motifs, where explorations of masculine and feminine, apparent polarities that are fused together. The flowers are never shown in full bloom, wilting in their last beautiful twist towards the Sun. For Gardner, drawing and painting have been a way for him to explore his sexuality from an early age. Michelangelo’s David, John Martin’s The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Peter Hujar’s Daniel Schook Sucking Toe were early instigators as to how Gardner handled the human form in his work. The elegant beauty of David’s namesake towers above the viewer, whilst in his own work the intimate size invites closeness. In particular it’s how Hujar captures his sitters in an “empathetic pure moment of stillness” that captures Gardner’s attention, and his portrayals of “humans being beautifully human, and beautifully vulnerable”. The works initiate an act of looking. The penetration of a boundary; a threshold; a gateway. They aim to serve as a way towards healing this relationship between humanity and its relationship to the natural world through personal, cultural, and spiritual ways of looking. “It seems for a long time we have been living from the outside-in, instead of the inside-out. A personal and collective deep dive inward looking might just unleash a new super human power.”

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“The show is a culmination of paintings that seek a reconnection between the human spirit and the natural world. The images are anchored in the idea of living from the inside out. An inner glow projects outwards towards the viewer, a solitary figure peers out towards the viewer's space and flowers grow and pierce through flesh. Something inside yearns to be liberated and everything tilts over the edge of a new threshold".

David Gardner