I AM NOT PAINTING a solo exhibition of new work by NEAL JONES
9th September - 8th October 2011 Private View Thurs 8th September 6.30 - 9.00 pm
On the walls, next to stalagmites, bones and bear skulls are animal pictures made with a snuffed out torch. Amid the silly, melodramatic narrative and prehistoric porn of a cave painting film by Werner Herzog - there was a story about an aborigine seeing some faded cave paintings. This man, saddened by their neglect, starts to re-make them. When asked why he was painting? He replied, "I am not painting."
Most of the works shown in this exhibition have been made this year on Neal Jones' allotment in North London. The mobiles, works on paper and some of the vases were made at home in Crouch End. The flowers displayed here were all specially grown for this show on his plot.
Neal's work returns us to the ideals of early modernist pursuit - of critical experiment - the unification of art and life; but with an understanding of its absurd impotence in the face of contemporary ecological and cultural imbalance. The work exudes a healthy, honest, and sometimes comedic defiance - an intent revolt against the comfortable solutions that we expect, or want, to see. But above all, the paintings demonstrate a grand ambition - something that most artists lack; that dare-do courage to seek the warmth of union, beauty and meaning within even the most insignificant looking of human marks. Sometimes alchemic, sometimes incomprehensible or even repelling; but all of equal importance in this strange pursuit.
