Foxy Production presents an exhibition by Gabriel Hartley. Hartley’s oil paintings and sculptures fuse the concepts and techniques of abstraction with powerfully raw figurative forms. His works appear to be at once taking on subjects and unraveling them, to be both gestating and timeworn. With bold brushstrokes he uses both clashing and coordinated colors in fields of patterning that are over-painted and, in places, burnt. He simultaneously builds and excavates forms that can be sensual, emotive, metaphoric, and ironic. He constructs curious and engagingly unstable objects that effect mysterious associations. He has an eye to art history and the role of painting within it; yet, rather than being burdened by quotation, Hartley’s lines, marks, colors, and surfaces let this history to seep into them.

Gabriel Hartley (London, UK, 1981) lives and works in London. He holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London and a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art from the Royal Academy Schools, London.

Selected exhibitions include: Foxy Production, New York (solo); Brown, London (both 2010); Foxy Production, New York; Swallow Street, London (solo); Jerwood Contemporary Painting Prize, Jerwood Space, London (both 2009); John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Parade Space, London (2008); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Liverpool, Manchester, Walsall, London (2007 – 2008).