IAN MONROE

Ian Monroe renders the promise and disappointment of modernity in its own language. From the vestigial materials of the suburban dreams of a cold world America – from wood grain walling to shag carpeting, garish orange to angular geometries – the artist creates large-scale collages on paper, in either monochrome or highly contrasting textures. Denying perspective and the viewer’s expectation of volumetric space, the artist’s depictions of cavernous but illusionary places propose that the project of Utopian desire, however internally erroneous and eternally alienating, continues, wherein man is not only absent, but turned away.

He received his MA from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2002. Monroe came to public attention in 2003 when the Saatchi Gallery featured a large-scale work from the artist’s MA show. The artist was included in ‘Edge of the Real’ 2004, a group painting show at the Whitechapel Gallery. ‘They Built Upon It’ (2005) at Haunch of Venison London was accompanied by the first major catalogue of Monroe’s work, including texts by poet and art critic, Barry Schwabsky. Monroe has contributed essays to a number of publications, including “Collage, Assembling Contemporary Art”, 2008, Black Dog Publications. Monroe was recently commissioned by St Johns College, Oxford to design a major public commission for the university. Most recently, Monroe was the recipient of the Freund Fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis, in partnership with the Saint Louis Art Museum where Monroe had his first US solo show.