Zebedee Jones 17 April - 24 May 2008 Private view Wednesday 16 April, 6-8 pm Mummery + Schnelle is delighted to present the first solo exhibition at the gallery by the painter, Zebedee Jones. Recent paintings form the core of a show that also includes work on paper, an aspect of this artist’s practice that has rarely been exhibited in this country. Jones came to wide critical attention in 1994 with his inclusion in Unbound: Possibilities in Painting, the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery that identified in the work of 14 international artists key creative tactile, personal and intellectual motivations that continue to influence art-making today. He subsequently took part in group shows acclaimed for their concentration on the materiality and vibrancy of contemporary painting, notably Real Art at Southampton City Art Gallery and From Here at Waddington Galleries and Karsten Schubert. His paintings comprise surfaces of densely modulated layers of paint over linen supports that project from the wall on deep stretchers. When each brushed application of paint has dried, Jones scrapes down the material with improvised tools and traditional implements to reveal marks and effects set up by the behaviour of the medium itself and inflected by resonant colour. Ostensibly monochrome, these surfaces extend to the thick and uneven edges that seem to record their dynamic making. In an essay specially commissioned to accompany this exhibition*, writer Martin Holman remarks that ‘These memorable works present themselves with the weight and substance of objects rather than conventional canvases. They are often (but not always) quite small and frequently square, as if regularity in dimensions will reduce distractions, for the artist as well as the viewer. The balance they aspire to is intuitive, a rationality that is sensed rather than measured in the relative qualities of surface, colour, scale, depth and gesture. When encountered in a naturally-lit room off a city street, that combination simultaneously applies the brake to the ambient desiccation and fragmentary nature of everyday and, somehow, complements its energy.' Zebedee Jones (b. London, 1970) studied at Norwich School of Art and received his MA from Chelsea College of Art. One-person exhibitions have taken place in London, Amsterdam, Dublin, New York and Rome since 1995. He was included in Unbound: Possibilities in Painting at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1994; Real Art – A New Modernism: British Reflexive Painters in the 1990s at Southampton City Art Gallery, Stedelijk Museum, Aaalst, Belgium and Leeds City Art Gallery in 1995-6; and At Sea, Tate Liverpool, in 2001-2. He lives and works in London. * Extract © Martin Holman, 2008 For the full text of this essay, please contact the gallery For enquiries, please contact Andrew Mummery at: andrew@mummeryschnelle.com or Wolfram Schnelle at: wolfram@mummeryschnelle.com   Back to exhibitions Click here to download a press release in pdf form Please scroll down for installation views