Dianne tanzer gallery + projects is proud to present a solo exhibition with artist Juan Ford. As noted by Art Collector magazine, Ford’s work is an example of why realist painting is so popular these days. He combines technical virtuosity with current ideas to create artworks that are strikingly contemporary.
With an increase in critical, curatorial and collector interest, Ford’s environmental commentary redefines the way we think about Australian landscape. Ford has always sought to pioneer a path through and beyond various predicaments of painted representation, in a constantly evolving series of projects. For the past 6 years he has focused on inverting paradigms of the Australian landscape tradition, while genuinely seeking engagement with it. In what began as an experiment, the conventions of landscape, botanical illustration and figuration were seized, upended and collided energetically, producing new and unexpected results.
Thus from the ashes of these stale and defiantly outdated traditions of painterly realism, new possibilities arise. In this series, native Australian flora have been collected and bound crudely to form rudimentary figures, confusing the distinctions between portraits, landscapes and botanical representations. From these rearrangements of genre, painstakingly rendered paintings are created.
Recently appointed Director of the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) Tony Ellwood has made it clear that Juan Ford’s works are integral to Australian contemporary art by swiftly acquiring work from his 2012 exhibition.
In 2011 Ford undertook a residency at the OMI International Arts Centre, New York and in 2012 was commissioned to create work for Hotel de Immigrantes, a project in Manifesto 9, the European Biennale. Ford has exhibited widely including at the Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane, National Portrait Gallery Canberra, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The Australian Embassy, Washington, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Ford has received numerous awards, including People’s Choice for the 2010 Basil Sellers Art Prize, the 2006 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and the 2004 Fletcher Jones Contemporary Art Prize. In 2012 Ford was a finalist in the Wynne Prize and Archibald Portrait Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
His work appears in significant collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Gippsland Art Gallery and the Victorian Parliamentary Collection. His work features in private collections worldwide.
Press release courtesy THIS IS NO FANTASY.
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