By stripping back photographs of complex urban structures, Richard Galpin reveals fragmented forms in dynamic spatial compositions. Each work is a single photographic print that has been meticulously scored and peeled to remove certain areas of the surface emulsion. Interplay between the angular abstractions of the stripped white paper, and the pristine surface of the remaining photograph, results in a dazzling reconfiguration of space. Through this reductive process, new forms emerge.

For this exhibition, Galpin has produced several works based on the New York cityscape. In both Automaton and Neo-capital, views of the Times Square area are reduced to a central cluster of elements which mass and take on a free-standing form of their own. The experience of the city that the work presents is one of stimulating disorientation, and delight in its formal pleasures. Simultaneously, Galpin’s increasingly complex reworking of his own photographs begins to contemplate a fantastical revolutionary reconstruction project.

Other works included in this exhibition focus on more singular structural forms. In Phase Two, a reworked building site appears as a launch pad projecting skyward, and in Fantasy Mouse and Odyssey, the structures of roller coasters become dynamic and exuberant abstractions. These works are more playful, and less overtly architectural than the cityscape works, and yet proffer a similar kind of utopian optimism.

Richard Galpin has had solo exhibitions at Hales Gallery (London) and Galeria Leme (Sao Paulo). His work has been selected for a variety of survey shows that investigate alternative uses of photography such as Attack:Attraction, Painting/Photography at the Marcel Sitcoske Gallery (San Francisco), The Photograph in Question at Von Lintel Gallery (New York), and Looking With/Out at the Courthauld Institute of Art (London).