David Thorpe (artist)

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David Thorpe (born 1972, London, UK) is an artists based in London.

Thorpe received his BA in 1994 from Humberside University [1] and his MA in 1998 from Goldsmiths [2] in London.

He has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including “Die Young Stay Pretty” at ICA London [3], “Ideal Worlds” at Schirn Kunsthalle [4] in Frankfurt, “British Art Show 6” [5] at various venues, “Extended Painting” at Monica de Cardenas [6] in Milan and “The Sea, The Sea” at Murray Guy [7] in New York. He is represented by 303 Gallery [8] in New York, Taru Nasu Gallery [9] in Japan and Maureen Paley [10] in London.

A selection of works by the artist were used as album and single covers by the UK band 'Engineers'.

David Thorpe approaches his work as if he were building his own ideal world from scratch. Through use of humble media, Thorpe’s collages and sculptures collectively formulate a vision of uninterrupted utopia, based on material purity, aesthetic wonder, and inexhaustible personal endeavour. Stemming from his interest in modernism, Thorpe’s architectural designs exude both a sublime beauty and spiritual isolation. Through developing his own aesthetic order and value principles, Thorpe explores the concepts of individualism and social structure. His works offer visual models of alternative self-sustainable belief systems.

Thorpe’s early collages present a spiritual chic of urban romanticism: inner city buildings, rendered desolate and magnificent, are contemplations of individual vs. universe. This ‘power-of-one’ conviction is replicated through Thorpe’s intensive process. Inspired by Japanese woodcuts and German Romantic painting, Thorpe’s scenes convey an awesome sense of space; made entirely from layered paper, each element is painfully stencilled with a penknife, and assembled with mind-boggling intricacy.

Moving away from depictions of isolated urban-scapes, Thorpe’s most recent work embodies the same sentiments of mysticism, design, and nature, but strips away the representational aspect. Thorpe capitalises on the tautology of his materials: wood, glass, pebbles, and dried flowers create pictorial illusion by representing themselves. Rather than envision the sublime outer world, these collaged reliefs carry a 3 dimensional physicality, operating as a self-contained object - fetishes for inward contemplation.