Beschreibung:

Richard Phillips Chastity 2007 Oil on linen. 304.8 × 230.2 cm (119 3/5 × 90 1/2 in). Signed and dated 'Richard Phillips 2007' on the overlap.
Provenance Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin Exhibited Düsseldorf, Museum Kunst Palast, Diana + Actaeon, Der verbotene Blick auf die Nacktheit, 25 October 2008 – 15 February 2009 Literature Diana + Actaeon, Der verbotene Blick auf die Nacktheit, exh. cat., Düsseldorf, 2008, p. 224 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay Richard Phillips creates hyperrealist glossy paintings that contest the validity and sanctity of images as conveyors of meaning. They incorporate material from a range of cultural sources including pornography, advertising and fashion, with the iconography of Mel Ramos Alex Katz and Andy Warhol Often cropping the figure, he re-situates his subjects against a bold neutral ground. Deprived of any clues to a setting and by removing any defining naturalistic details, his figures become inaccessible ciphers of contemporary power. His objective is to obfuscate reality, distorting truth by placing his subjects in the distended space of the canvas. Chastity tantalizes the viewer, portraying an open legged female figure erotically charged by the presence of a highly fetishized belt locked with two padlocks. The unidentified protagonist flauntingly exercises her control over the viewer submerged underneath a personal commentary on the broader social context of contemporary power relations. “Unbelievably, there is a possibility of an art that, after the nineties, will not preach or illustrate, that will be literally destructive of the coherence and order that define the levelled-out stasis of modern, socially relativistic culture. The hope is to set up favourable conditions in relationship to these topics, whereby patterns of thought may be ignited through individual, direct, sensual experience of the living and the beauty in painting as Art.” (The artist, in Yilmaz Dziewior, ed., Richard Phillips Hamburg, 2002) Read More