Homeland

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to present “HOMELAND”, a display of paintings by a group of British artists whose motifs and strategies may be seen as contemporary takes on History Painting. Using varying and contrasting approaches, the works engage with the appropriation and manipulation of historical and art historical images. Toby Ziegler’s recent paintings on aluminium are works of pure abstraction that begin with a figurative motif. Taking a digital image of a landscape painting by Thomas Gainsborough as his starting point, Ziegler manipulates the image on a computer, changing the polarity of the colours and altering their saturation so that the formal qualities are retained but the colour information is unrecognisably distorted. The altered composition is then painted onto an aluminium panel. Progressing into erasure, the paint is subsequently removed using an electric sander to reveal the metal beneath. Ziegler’s process subjects the images to a process of digital...