Long and Ryle Gallery will be representing Simon Casson at the London Art Fair 2021
Returning for its 33rd edition, the Fair will present leading modern and contemporary galleries in an alternative digital format: London Art Fair. Providing an unmissable opening to the art calendar, London Art Fair invites collectors and enthusiasts to discover works by renowned artists from the 20th century to today.
‘Nights Mizmaze and our dystopia lands
2020 and dystopia rules the land, with doom ringing out from an unseen Dickensian clock face, ticking the months away, a preternatural predator, laden with falling spears of ice… We watch through anxious fingers for the latest stats extolling the erosion of life, freedom, footfall and fortune. Interiors follow the lead and breed an overwhelming sea of greys and inky blacks, through which the artificial light glimmers from the screen. Shut in, shut down, we are instructed to obey and listen to the wise folk of the Nordic realm with their folksy advice as to seeing the bright side of the endless dimsey.
Beneath the floorboards of this chimerical theatre, amongst the smeechy cider orchards of stumpy trees holding close their diminutive, bone hard apples, lies Simon Casson’s studio. An allegorical curiosity cabinet worthy of an unhinged Victorian collector of goodness knows what, envelopes the paintings that emerge. Brazen in their glorious beauty, the paintings elude description, allowing a marriage of skill thought lost to long dead generations and an intensely contemporary knowingness. The glaze is sometimes shielded and other times positively glares with impunity at the interloper viewer. Perhaps the players are crossing the phantasmal threshold from a 17th century faux farmyard or a Hardy tome to parade across the canvas. Liminal doorways step between intense emblematic figuration and pure abstraction, causing a frisson across the piece. Swaths of luminous paint, lay upon flesh, pawing at dainty ribbons, revelling in the dance.
Old West Country dialect bequeaths another lime-layer, with paintings christened with lyrical songs of a yesteryear. Poetic frisky additions to the narrative, they intensify the quixotic nature of the beast with chronicles romping. Casson as the augurer; knee deep in pallets of hues and pigments, where gluttonous paint mountains sit aside bottles fit for an alchemist’s reverie.
Unveil the players, leave the poetry in disarray and uncloak the ciphers, Casson has mastered the language of exquisite painterly virtuosity. Arrive at the paintings and you are met with pulchritude and the attar of Somerset woodsmoke.
Sheridan Casson in conversation with Simon Casson‘s Studio 2021
