BALL THE WALL
Stephen Dean, James Hyde, Richard Woods

November 23 2006 - January 7 2007
Private view Wednesday 22 November

The ordinary changes fast.  Hunkered between Utopia and Nostalgia, the commonplace is both imperative and model for Stephen Dean, James Hyde and Richard Woods.  In this show Woods presents Images of wallpaper and wood grain bigged-up, both in size and in visceralness.  Woods renders his patterns in viscous gloss paint.  Hyde works the material means of the ordinary, presenting boxes of plate glass, the basic construction unit of the modernist curtain wall, containing oil paint, that most ordinary of art materials.  Dean uses familiar objects - stacked paperback books and modified ladders in the past to make his painterly objects.  In this show it's barroom dart boards, scrambled to make vertiginous dials.

Ordinary artists? Yes, but the ordinary transformed... into art which is, when presented in an art gallery, well - ordinary.   The ordinary is the cover, the politic of these artists' works.  A counterexample, when the ordinary is presented as untransformed in a gallery it becomes exotic and it is a narrative or the institutional frame that houses the significance.  It may be that old time modernist immanence-of-the-art-object, but these works fiercely define their own frame.  As Dean, Hyde and Woods hunt the ordinary and gather it up into their art works the ordinary is defined, enshrined and renovated.  The ordinary changes fast.  It is this dynamic of transformation with its' attendant physical effects of image, material and object... and equally hand, pattern and texture that is a source of (infectious) delight for Dean, Hyde and Woods.  In an anthropological sense this is how to turn the ordinary into a place of commonality.

All the works in this show are wall works.  They take the place of painting, but not its' good, traditional form, (these are not properly, or properly badly, rendered oil on canvases).  Conventional painting expects the wall to disappear as the painting's fantasies are consumed, but with the dartboards (Dean), transparent boxes (Hyde) and wallpaper patterns (Woods) the wall is essential to bounce against.  More than a support it's a field of possibilities.  The title BALL THE WALL comes from a song the New Orleans pianist and singer Professor Longhair wrote in the 1950's.  The phrase probably refers to dancing to or up the wall, but it has other connotations, sex, gaming or smacking up against a limit and though certainly not an intended meaning of Professor Longhair's exuberant song, abject weeping.  

Dean, Hyde and Woods are friends who have been eyeing each other's work over the past decade.  This show is bound to reveal some fairly compelling affinities and distinctions.  Stephen Dean, originally from Paris, James Hyde from western New York State and Richard Woods who grew up in Northern England have different cultural and social maps, but share a commitment to an embodied physic in their art-making.  Woods recently created a house sized exterior installation at Wimbledon college, Hyde recently created a commissioned intervention of luminous furniture at the San Diego Museum of Art and Dean is currently exhibiting at the critically acclaimed Santa Fe Biennial.

 
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First image from left:
James Hyde A Little Negative 2006
Acrylic on wood, plexiglas

 Richard Woods
Painted Leaves No.4, Blue Flowers No.1, Painted Leaves No.9
All three works 2006, gloss paint on plywood, 122 x 90cm

Second image:
Stephen Dean Target (double) 2006
Uncoiled dartboard, 92 x 181cm

Third image:
James Hyde A Little Negative 2006
Acrylic on wood, plexiglas

Fourth image, from left:
James Hyde
Cool Star, Rising Star, Fast Green Star
All three works 2006, acrylic on wood, vinyl, 66.7 x 48.25 x 11.4cm

Stephen Dean
Born in Paris, France in 1968.
Lives in New York

Selected solo exhibitions
2007 Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, USA
2006 Miami Art Museum, USA
Galerie Xippas, Paris, France
2005 Santander Museum of Fine Arts, Spain*
2004 Galerie Xippas, Athènes, Greece.
2003 Fuse, Galerie Xippas, Paris, France
Volta, Henry Urbach Architecture, New York, USA.
2001 Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, USA.
Marcel Sitcoske Gallery, San Francisco, USA.
Pulse, Henry Urbach Architecture, New York, USA.

Selected group exhibitions
2006
Stillpoints of the Turning World,
Site Santa Fe Biennial, New Mexico, USA *
Ball the Wall, David Risley Gallery, London
Human game, Fondazione Pitti, Stazione Leopole,
Florence, Italy *
Art and Football, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil,
Rio de Janeiro *
Dark Places, Santa Monica Museum of Art,
Santa Monica, USA

2005
Always a little further, 51st Venice Biennial, Venice, Italy*
Facade projections, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
Roundleather world, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany.*
War is over, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
di Bergamo, Italy.*
Paris à Shanghaï, Shanghai Museum of Fine-Arts,
Shanghaï, China.*

2004
The joy of my dreams, 1st Sevilla Biennial,
Isla de la Cartuja, Spain.*
At the Still Point of the Turning World, FACT,
Liverpool, UK.
Prix Altadis: Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France ;
Galerie Elba Benitez, Madrid, Spain.*
Open House, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn,
NY, USA.*
The human condition, the dream of a shadow.
Museo d’Història de la ciudad, Barcelona, Spain.
Multitudes, Frac Corse, Corte, France.

2003
Poetic Justice, 8th Istanbul biennial, Turkey*
Videos in Progress. Rhode Island
School of Design Museum, Providence, USA.
Nuits Blanches, Musée Zadkine, Paris, France.
Living with Duchamp, Tang museum, Skidmore College,
Saratoga Springs, USA.

2002
Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York, USA*
Exotisme, Vu d’ici, vues d’ailleurs, Frac Corse, France.
Nao e cinema, nao e televisao e nem e video, Capacete Entertainments, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
The Theory of Leisure, La Coleccion Jumex,
Mexico City, Mexico.
Déplacements, Le Quartier, Quimper, France.

2001
Finely Drawn, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, USA.

* Exhibition catalogue

Selected collections
Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA.
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France.
La Caixa, Barcelone, Spain.
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, USA.
Musée d'Art Contemporain de Vitry-sur-Seine, France
Israel Museum, Tel Aviv, Israël
Jumex Foundation, Mexico City, Mexico.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C, USA.
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, USA

 Richard Woods


Solo Shows and Projects
 2006 'Logo no.26' commissioned work for 'Thin cities'
Platform for Art.Leicester Square underground station, London                                     
2006 Galleria S.A.L.E.S, Rome                    
2005 'The Decorative Arts' Maze Galleria, Turin
2005 'Renovation' Wimbledon, London
2005 'New Build' New College, Oxford University, Oxford
2005 'Mock Tudor Painting' Sadlers wells, London
2005 'Logo 14' New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall
2004 'Super Tudor' permanent project. Woodstock, New York
2004 'Countrystyle' Hoxton Square, London
2004 'Nice Life' Deitch Projects, Miami
2004 Vamiali, Athens
2003 'Super Tudor' Deitch Projects, New York
2003 Galleria   S.A.L.E.S, Rome
2002 Griedervonputtkamer, Berlin
2001 Modern Art, London

Architectural commissions and collaboration
2006 commission for Paul Smith, New York   
2006 Red Ear jeans with Paul Smith, Tokyo     
2005 collaboration with architect Maria Guiseppina, SicilyGrasso Cannizzo. (Ragusa)
2004 Collaboration with architect Maria Guiseppina, SicilyGrasso Cannizzo. (Vittoria)
2003 Architectural commission for Commes des Garcon With Rei Kawakubo. Osaka,
2002 Collaboration with Paul Smith,' Horn', Tokyo   

Selected Group Show      
2006
Ball the Wall David Risely Gallery, London


2005
Representative Artist Uk Pavilion Aichi, Nagoya
(With Cornelia Parker, Richard Deacon) catalogue

 2004
Cosmic Gallerie
(with Matt Collishaw and James Hopkins), Paris           
Henry Moore Project Venice Biennale. Catalogue available, Venice'Stopover' (curated by David Thorp, Sarah Glennie)

2003      
The Galleries Show. Modern Art.
Royal Academy of Arts, London
Supernature (with Paul Morrison and Henrik Hakinsonn) Trussardi Foundation, Milan
'Supersonic and the Alien' Galleria S.A.L.E.S, Rome                                                        
2002
'Framing my view' (with Henric Plenge Jacobson) Maze, Turin

2001
'The Marathon' Artio Gallery
(with Darren Almond, Keith Tyson And Liam Gillick) catalogue available, Athens