Web Exhibition Paul Morrison

Paul Morrison
1 – 31 October 2020

‘Using botanical guides, children's storybooks, and cartoons as his inspiration and source material, british-artist Paul Morrison creates large-scale monochrome landscapes that have been described as "Disney without the characters." Not unlike Alice's psychedelic-tinged Wonderland, many of Morrison's hypnotic fantasy environments seem to pivot between innocence and malevolence in the blink of an eye. Morrison alters our sense of scale, perspective, and positive-negative space to create visually striking compositions. Spiky brush and trees often obscure the view beyond the immediate foreground. Dandelion plants and other flora are enlarged to many times their normal size. Referencing Pop art and Op art as well as neo-romantic bookplate illustrations and the graphic art of Aubrey Beardsley, Morrison's Pop-naturalist landscapes flirt with abstraction in jarring and unexpectedly seductive ways.’

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Morrison has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, with solo exhibitions and projects including, Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, UK; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; UCLA Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Wallworks Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand; Chloroplast, Southampton City Art Gallery, Hampshire, UK; Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany; Mesophylle, Magasin, Grenoble, France; Haematoxylon, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; Saxifraga, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI; Bloomberg Space, London, UK; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; Las Vegas Art Museum, Las Vegas, NV; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK; The Horticultural Society of New York Gallery, New York, NY; Florigen, Fondazione Volume, Rome, Italy; Auctorum, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, UK; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK; Stadtgalerie, Saarbrücken, Germany; Equisetum, Kangkangee Arts Village, Busan, South Korea; Horsetail, Site, Sheffield and Lucid Garden, The Norton Museum, West Palm Beach FL.

His work can be found in many public art collections, including Victoria and Albert Museum, South London Gallery and British Council Collection in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Museum of Art in Rhode Island, Städel Museum in Frankfurt and Elgiz Museum in Istanbul.

Instagram: paulmorrisonstudio

Image List

1. Psychotrope, 2012, acrylic on linen, 110x150cm
2. Untitled (Web), 2019, palladium leaf and acrylic on linen, 80 x 60cm
3. Hibernaculum, 2007, Bloomberg Space, London
4. Untitled (after Bosschaert), 2019 acrylic on linen, 120 x 90 x 4 cm
5. Untitled (after Brueghel the elder), 2019 acrylic on linen, 120 x 90 x 4 cm
6. Hibernaculum, Bloomberg Space, London (installation view)
7. Filament, 2004, acrylic on aluminium, 200cm diameter (foreground), Endophyte, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 228.5 x 152.5cm, (background), installation view, Las Vegas Art Museum
8. Ochrea, 2008, Towada Art Center, Japan (architectural model)
9. Ochrea, 2008, Towada Art Center, Japan
10. Lucid Garden, 2019, Norton Museum 24 carat gold installation, West Palm Beach (detail)
11. Viscin, 2012, 24 carat gold on polymer, 159x106,5 cm
12. Lucid Garden, 2019, 24 carat gold leaf, The Norton Museum, West Palm Beach, USA
13. Phylum, 2006, painted aluminium, 400 x 250 x 2cm
14. Gamodeme, 2006, The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu