curated by Lucy Stein & Simon Bayliss
10 July - 22 August 2014
CAROLE GIBBONS, NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE, ABIGAIL REYNOLDS, NICOLA BEALING, ALAN DAVIE, DM THOMAS, SCOTTIE WILSON, FOSTER & BEREAN, DAVID INSHAW, SIMON BAYLISS, LUCY STEIN, JUDITH BERNSTEIN, ROBERT LENKIEWICZ, MICHELLE USSHER, FRANCE-LISE MCGURN, HUMBERTO POBLETE-BUSTAMANTE, SUSAN HILLER, MANUELA GERNEDEL, NATALYA GONCHAROVA
I dreamt of falling trees in a wild storm
I was between them as a desolate shore
came to meet me and I ran, scared stiff,
there was a trap door but I could not lift
it, I have started an affair
with your son, on a train somewhere
in a dark tunnel, his hand was underneath
my dress between my thighs I could not breathe
he took me to a white lakeside hotel
somewhere high up.
I was between them as a desolate shore
came to meet me and I ran, scared stiff,
there was a trap door but I could not lift
it, I have started an affair
with your son, on a train somewhere
in a dark tunnel, his hand was underneath
my dress between my thighs I could not breathe
he took me to a white lakeside hotel
somewhere high up.
On a hungover morning in Plymouth, painters (and friends) Lucy Stein and Simon Bayliss stumbled across a paperback copy of 'The White Hotel', resting on a street wall. It was the day after the opening of 'SS Blue Jacket', their inaugural exhibition as curatorial partners, and this literary encounter signified a serendipitous moment. With the book retrieved, and when invited to curate the Gimpel Fils summer show, it was clear from where the project should arise.
The novel, by DM Thomas, begins with a long poem written for the purpose of psychoanalysis, by a female patient of a fictionalised Sigmund Freud. In this text she imagines a wildly erotic affair with the professor's son, at a white hotel by a lake. Yet while the newly met couple indulge in incessant carnal pleasures, a series of catastrophes, including a fire and a flood, kill almost every other guest at the resort. The narrative is surreal, inscribed as a streaming hallucination, yet it imparts visceral suggestions of raw nature, freak weather, celestial events, and a magnificent surrounding countryside.
The exhibition draws on Gimpel Fils' legacy of exhibiting both modernist and contemporary artists. It includes pieces from the gallery collection, as well as work by invited artists. Through the prism of painting a poetic response to the themes of the book unfolds.
