ALLEN JONES

‘Prior to the cinema, visual artists depended on line and colour to create a sense of movement. A commission from Christian Louboutin gave me an actual chance to work with a moving image, the resulting video becoming part of his touring exhibition. This present Work shows the figure, again becoming involved with a sculpture that stands nearby. The sequence plays with our perception of space, 3D becomes 2D when the sculpture materialises behind her on the screen. She turns and embrace it and gradually becomes consumed by the building blocks of Art, light, line and colour.’— Allen Jones

There is an air of exuberant defiance permeating the works that Allen Jones has made since 2017, the period encompassed by this exhibition, when he turned eighty. These paintings, sculptures and hybrids between the two, which include some audacious new directions, constitute not only a vigorous refusal to back down from his lifelong pursuit of erotic imagery centred on female bodies but also a sense of celebration and wonderment that he should still be here at all. Like the astoundingly fresh paper cut-outs made by his hero Matisse during the decade preceding his death, this late flowering displays a youthful vigour, invention and joyful sense of abandon that easily match the trailblazing Pop Art on which Jones staked his reputation and place in art history in the early 1960s.— Marco Livingstone, art critic

Press release courtesy Almine Rech