Iris Schomaker Exhibiiton at Huxley-Parlour, 45 Maddox Street, LONDON

Closed

18.4 – 25.5 2024

Iris Schomaker:Watching the Perseids

45 Maddox Street

Iris Schomaker:Watching the Perseids

18.04 – 25.05.2024

Closed

Hours

Monday to Saturday

10:00 am – 5:30 pm

Gallery

45 Maddox Street
London
W1S 2PE

Huxley-Parlour are delighted to present a new solo exhibition of work by German artist Iris Schomaker, her second with the gallery. Watching the Perseids presents new small-scale works on panel and paper, made over the past year, which continue Schomaker’s exploration of the generative tension between figuration and abstraction.

Iris Schomaker, Untitled, 2024
2

Iris Schomaker. Untitled (2024)

The exhibition’s title, referring to the Perseid meteor shower, relates to Schomaker’s notion that abstraction offers a unique potential for creative encounters between viewer and image. The natural phenomenon of the Perseids represents a moment outside of our quotidian experiences of time and place, which is at once intelligible but inaccessible and inconceivable. For Schomaker, this confrontation with something greater than ourselves mirrors what she pertains to in her own practice, which attempts to visualise experiences connected to, but ultimately beyond, our own reality.

The Exhibition

7

The Works

21

1

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

2

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

3

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

4

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (cat on shoulder)

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

5

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

6

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

7

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (chess)

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

8

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (chess)

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

9

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

10

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (from the “Kyra“ series)

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

11

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (from the “Kyra“ series)

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

12

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

13

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

14

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

15

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

16

Iris Schomaker

Untitled

2024

Watercolour and oil on paper

17

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (night forest)

2024

Watercolour and oil on wood

18

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (night forest)

2024

Watercolour and oil on wood

19

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (night forest)

2024

Watercolour and oil on wood

20

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (night forest)

2024

Watercolour and oil on wood

21

Iris Schomaker

Untitled (night forest)

2024

Watercolour and oil on wood

Iris Schomaker

B. Germany1973

Iris Schomaker

B. Germany1973

Biography

Iris Schomaker’s unique brand of figuration is heavily bound to abstraction in its use of bold, graphic forms and composite anthropomorphism. Her radical figurative-abstraction makes use of collected samples of visual culture: a studio filled with photographs, newspaper cuttings and ephemera help her to centre her figures in reality. Nonetheless, the spaces which her forms inhabit, as well as the faceless figures themselves, are arranged into abstracted, graphic compositions which Schomaker admits lean heavily into abstraction. The influence of Chinese and Japanese ink drawing and wood prints, as well as European artists such as Henri Matisse, is keenly felt in the artist’s interwoven presentation of line and form.

Schomaker’s works frequently feature still figures reclining or relaxing, often accompanied by an animal. The artist describes the scenes as ‘private moments’; assimilated through an exacting process of reduction, Schomaker’s sparing use of colour matches her desire to present these figures in their most simplified form. She begins by making a series of drawings, translating the most successful into large-format works in charcoal, before proceeding to work in mixed-media. As a result, Schomaker’s works present a surface testifying to her diverse working methods, revealing pencil marks, and strong, graphic outlines.

Schomaker was born in Stade, Germany in 1973. She studied at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design, Kiel, continuing her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen and Trondheim. Schomaker has participated in several national exhibitions, including at the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin in 2007 and 2010, and at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt in 2013. The following year she participated at the Mediations Biennale in Poznan, Poland. Schomaker’s work is now held in numerous public and private collections, including the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Germany and Deutsche Bank collections.

She lives and works in Berlin.

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