Simon Birch (b. 1974), The sky was aquamarine, stroked with clouds. She could smell the grass and taste the scent of small, crushed flowers, 2015; Oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm
Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong presents The Inevitable, an exhibition of new paintings by renowned Hong Kong-based artist Simon Birch. This is the second solo exhibition of Birch’s work to be held at the Hong Kong gallery and it will run concurrently with Art Basel Hong Kong.
Birch is celebrated for his gestural, thickly-impastoed portraits teeming with the angst and energy of his sitters. These technically precise paintings capture the dynamism of his models through broad, overlapping planes of color pulled across the canvas. Birch successfully conveys this intensity of motion in The sky was aquamarine, stroked with clouds. She could smell the grass and taste the scent of small, crushed flowers, 2015, the staggering figure seemingly shielding herself in a vortex of color and movement, her body parts becoming fractured, geometric fields of colour.
About the artist
Born in 1974 in Brighton, England, Birch has lived and worked in Hong Kong for over twenty years. He has had solo exhibitions in Beijing, Los Angeles, Miami, and Singapore and has participated in group shows at the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Birch has been awarded the prestigious Louis Vuitton Asian Art Prize and the Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Birch has organized many large-scale multimedia installation projects in Hong Kong, most notably: HOPE & GLORY: A Conceptual Circus (2010) and Daydreaming With…The Hong Kong Edition(2012) and is currently working on a multimedia installation in New York.
About the exhibition
Duration: 12 MAR - 29 APR 2015
Venue: Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong
Courtesy of the artist and Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong, for further information please visit www.benbrownfinearts.com.
