Two Dutch artists, Neil Fortune & Aimée Terburg will have their solo show at Gray Contemporary.
Neil Fortune: Colorful ribs and guts of Adam
Fortune creates works with a strong interest in the social dimension of art objects. Touching upon different media and artist positions, from sculpture to architecture, paintings to performance, having as a common thread a strong engagement with social dilemmas, he crosses boundaries between disciplines. His research is mainly developed in the studio, a preferred locus in which his practice unfolds for the public space. At Gray Contemporary Fortune exhibits a series of sculptures suspended in a liminal space between painting and sculpture.
Neil Fortune presents a compelling series of works that he describes as hybrid sculpture. The works are sewn on a machine, made of textile, polyester-fiber, isolation foam and a variable mixture of paints, varnish, wood-glue, many of the material he would use to construct paintings and sculpture. He dips the textile into liquid paint. This procedure is repeated until the paint dries. These works first emerged as experiment at a time Fortune was simultaneously working on two projects: a series of his Social Sculpture (that is made of white textile sewn on a machine to be arranged on the gallery floor, setup to invite visitors to engage in a physical dialog with the sculpture), and his architectural painting done on canvas (depicting large and empty spaces mainly behind the scene of a situation, such as exhibition openings or theater stages). He got the idea to separate one of the sewn cylinders forms from the Social Sculpture to create a hybrid work that bridges the liminal space between the two different disciplines. It is capsulated in these works with a degree of serenity and clear minimal form.
His use of colors and the way he titles the works comes from an intuitive perception. Titles such as One Of Those Things (for a black and white work) Golden Crust on an Apple Pie (for a yellow work). These are fragments obtained from songs, poems, films or something he saw in the streets. By separating the sewn cylinder, he uncovered a space of possibility for experimentation. He wishes that these minimal objects in their own majestic way will slow you down, just for a moment, so you can really experience them. As a result his first sculptures, shown in the ‘Summer Show 2017’ at Nieuw Dakota & Francis Boeske Project (NL, Amsterdam), won the jury price.

Aimée Terburg, untitled (#43), acrylic / varnish on polyester, 60” x 42” x 1,5”, 2018.