George Rouy is one of the most exciting figurative painters working today. With a range of styles, processes and visual effects in acrylic and oil paint, his paintings are intense and expressive depictions of complicated psychological states that render an internal experience external. Bodies are variously nude, distorted, stretched, contorted, classical, fluid – revealing an artist with extraordinary technical dexterity and range. Bodies are often placed together, either literally connected by paint and brushstroke, or in close proximity to one another, hinting at the connectedness of people's being and states. In this exemplary work, Fear of my own oblivion, Rouy continues his investigation of body and psyche, creating a symbolic work that resists a straightforward or linear narrative.
“A lot of the works are very personal, but they’re also not at the same time…I think it’s important that they’re not autobiographical. There needs to be enough space so that the viewer can enter it and not just assess it as these stories, because they’re not stories. They’re almost like symbols.”
— George Rouy
George Rouy (b. 1994) lives and works in Faversham, Kent, UK. Since graduating from Camberwell College of Arts, he has exhibited internationally, including Belly Ache, Almine Rech, Paris, France (2022, solo); Real Corporeal, Gladstone Gallery, New York, USA (2022); A Thing for the Mind, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, UK (2022); Shit Mirror, Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany (2022, solo); Rested, Nicola Vassell, New York, USA (2021); and Clot, Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2020). His work is represented in the collections of the ICA, Miami, USA; Fondation Cartier and Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Ståhl Collection, Norrköping, Sweden; M Woods, X Museum and 69 Art Campus, Beijing, China; and Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China.