All Visual Arts, London Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011
Exhibited
London, All Visual Arts, Jonathan Wateridge, Mittelland, 13 October - 12 November 2011, pp. 28-31, 40-41, 50 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
'I merely wanted a sense that their whole life, everything that they're doing is somehow in flux and also what questions that raises given the age they're at. If this had been a young couple, in their twenties, perhaps the image would seem utopian, it could be aspirational, but this does something else'. Jonathan Wateridge
In mimetically capturing a mundane scene of invented reality, Repainting, from Jonathan Wateridge’s Mittelland series, encapsulates the artist’s ability to interrogate perception, rendering the image strikingly realistic yet devoid of the intrusive details of photography. A single light source illuminates the room, invoking the chiaroscuro of Old Master paintings whilst reflecting artificial studio lighting. The viewer hovers between the realism of the painted scene and its obviously constructed nature. Drawing attention to the artifice of image-making, Wateridge choreographs scenes before capturing them as the basis for his painterly compositions. Considering painting a more complex medium for capturing the ‘now’, Wateridge lifts elements from cinema and photography to create his own constructed representations of life, or, as Wateridge has termed his practice, a form of ‘faux-documentary’. Repainting plants a seed of doubt within the viewer regarding how one ought to perceive a picture and in doing so Wateridge reinvigorates the medium of painting.
Property from an Important Private European Collection