RL Fine Arts is pleased to present an exhibition of selected works of artist Alexis Kersey.

Born in Mysore, India but raised and educated in the United Kingdom, Alexis Kersey brings a particular unique viewpoint to that of the colonial past and cultural heritage of the British in India.

These works show Kersey putting into place his preoccupation with indentity both personal and cultural, ethnic and regional, particularly as it is posited towards India. In these works, later to come to fruition in his series of Company School Paintings, the artist has created a mythical race of beings, such as one could imagine as being born anew with Post Independence India, that is responsive and responding to the global pressures of the contemporary world.

Kersey trained with the billboard and signboard painters in South India, and brings this aesthetic and style to his works: the color, the exaggeration, the boldness, the impressive size,in order to show his modern super race of beings caught in a cultural in between. Utlizing the kitsch vocabulary of countless calendar art that depicts the deities, common throughout India in all shops, one is struck by the amazingly vibrant synthesis of all these elements into a unique voice of surreal strangeness. These happy beings, originating as characters in educational manuals, are happily going about their new roles attempting to build a modern India.