The Horticultural Society of New York is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Paul Morrison as part of its continuing exhibitions program featuring art that investigates horticulture. The exhibition will consist of ten mythical black and white screenprints created by Morrison at Paragon Press, London.

‘Calathidium’ is a botanical term referring to flowerheads of which several different species are represented in this body of work. Whorled heads of chrysanthemums and concentric petals of gerberas and cornflowers are punctuated by thistles, lilies and cowslips in the compositions. The perspective is exaggerated by skewed pictorial viewpoints – time is conflated through the graphic nature of the work. Morrison’s whimsical imagery conjures medieval landscapes, illuminated manuscript pages, and folkloric incantations.

This exhibition, curated by Jodie Vicenta Jacobson, evokes the history of horticulture’s relationship to visual art. The work traffics in modalities ranging from the Renaissance through Modernism, taking plants as a point of departure. In addition to manipulating the picture plane, Morrison also inverts the perceived hierarchy of the plant kingdom, celebrating plants that have previously been considered lowly. The thistle is king.

Morrison was born in Liverpool in 1966 and graduated from Goldsmith’s College in 1998. He currently lives and works in Sheffield and London. Morrison has exhibited in London since 1996 and had his first New York solo exhibition with Cheim & Read in 2004. This will be his first exhibition at The Horticultural Society of New York. Morrison’s work has been subject of several recent museum exhibitions, including shows at Las Vegas Art Museum, Nevada (2008), Bloomberg Space, London (2007) and The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii (2006); he has also shown at IMMA, Dublin, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. His work is in the permanent collection at MoMA amongst other institutions and has been reviewed in such publications as Flash Art, Modern Painters and Artforum International.