PAUL WINSTANLEY

the subjects of vacant spaces, the commonplace, and the dystopic, and painting’s ability totransform these familiar and at times melancholic landscapes into the sublime.

The role of the viewer is central to an understanding of Winstanley’s paintings and hisrecent use of the figure echoes that active passivity which is reflected in his new _Situation_paintings. The gallery part of the paintings derives from photos Winstanley took in theSecession, in Vienna, a few years ago. It’s a very early model of a modernist gallery that hasbeen the inspiration for countless others works since. Winstanley says, “The aim is for themto approach a kind of realism, to subscribe to languages of photography, but also to teeteron the edge of falsehood.”

Interior with Large Window (Red and Blue) are reminiscent of his 2008 diaphanous andtranslucent series Veil. Winstanley says of his new series based on a real life Hamburgchurch, “The modernism of the window’s design appealed to me directly because of theinternationalism of this visual language and the sense of post-war renaissance embedded init.” The Lilies were started in 2019 long before the present viral situation arose, but sincethen they seem to have acquired this other possible layer of metaphor in relation to thepassing from one to another.

Paul Winstanley was born in Manchester in 1954 and lives and works in London. His firstretrospective was held at ARTSPACE in Auckland, New Zealand. Other solo exhibitionsinclude Driven Landscapes, Camden Arts Centre, London and Annexe, Tate Britain, inLondon, UK. Selected group shows include Window to the World, Fondation de l’Hermitage,Lausanne, which traveled to Museo Cantonale d’arte and Museo d’arte, Lugano,Switzerland; Lifelike, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Deer, Le Consortium, Dijon,France; Out of focus. After Gerhard Richter’, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany; Sea Fever:From Turner to today, Southampton City Art Gallery, UK; Terror and the Sublime: Art in anAge of Anxiety, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland; Conflict Tales: Subjectivity, BurgerCollection, Berlin, Germany; Self as Selves, Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin, Ireland;Inside Architecture, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and 8 Visions, One Dream,Today Art Museum, Beijing, China.