Ansel Krut, Verbatim, at Jerwood Gallery, Hastings

Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, will be unveiling a a major survey exhibition of painting by artist Ansel Krut. The exhibition will feature new paintings as well as work previously unseen in the UK.

Krut’s painting focuses on subverting still life by linking objects to create improbable, playful and often dark human forms. His provocative and comic inventions, drawing on paradoxes, vaudeville and peep show, are poised between absurdity and moral criticism. Krutt ascribes much of the unsettling imagery in his paintings to growing up in Apartheid in South Africa. His grotesque and provocative inventions, drawing on paradoxes, vaudeville and peep show, are poised between absurdity and moral criticism. Krut’s technique involves constructing his surface with layers of nuanced paint application in which there is a strong relationship to drawing and pictorial space.

Krut says of his work:
‘Sometimes these paintings are comic, sometimes troubled, sometimes both comic and troubled. It’s as if they all have personalities, histories; as though they have accumulated experiences. They tell their stories through the imagery of course but also through the visible traces of their making. They report back verbatim on their construction. They are all familiar characters to me – though there are some I’d prefer not to have to sit next to on the bus.’

Ansel Krut, Verbatim, Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, from May 3 until July 9, 2014