Gavin Turk: Kerze

Overview

‘I first came to notice this painting [Kerze, 1983] in 1988 when it was used on the album cover of Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. It seemed to extend the mood of the music and got lodged in my subconscious; now more than 30 years later, this feeling of pathos has started to reappear in my work.’

Gavin Turk

Ben Brown Fine Arts is proud to present Kerze, our fourth solo exhibition of British artist Gavin Turk at the London gallery (4 November – 14 January). The exhibition will unveil a new series of paintings, meticulously rendered still lifes of candles based on Gerhard Richter’s renowned photorealist paintings, though in typical Turk fashion the recognizable imagery is subverted by presenting the candles as recently extinguished, their curls of smoke trailing up the canvas.

Over the last three decades, Turk has relentlessly challenged notions of value, authorship, and identity in his work, often by boldly referencing the work of modern masters and infusing it with his own identity and hand as an artist. His work is at once provocative, disruptive, humorous, mischievous, and erudite, earning him the distinction as one of the most interesting and notorious contemporary British artists today.

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