David Batchelor (artist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David Batchelor (born 1955, Dundee, Scotland) is an artist and writer based in London.


A sculptor, artist, writer, (he is the author of Chromophobia) and he is currently a tutor at the Royal College of Art.

He has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including the 26th Sao Paulo Biennale, “Days Like These” at Tate Britain [1], “Extreme Abstraction” at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery [2] in Buffalo, “Chromosexuals” at Galleri Bouhlou [3] in Bergen and “Amid Concrete, Clay and General Decay” at Konstfack Gallery in Stockholm. He is represented by Wilkinson Gallery [4] and Ingleby Gallery [5] in Edinburgh.

David Batchelor’s most recognised works are colourful lightbox installations using salvaged bits and pieces from the streets of London. Batchelor takes industrial debris – trolleys, shelving units, factory scrap – and transforms them into frames to hold assemblages of neon, perspex and found shopfront signs. The resulting sculptures are monochromes harking back to the days of Minimalism but retaining a vital and joyous connection to the surroundings that birthed them. While Dan Flavin’s neon tubes and Donald Judd’s factory-built boxes are now consigned to the precious environs of the museum, the heart of Batchelor’s work lies very firmly in city streets and scrapyards. The simple pleasure of colour is at the centre of Batchelor’s project; he seeks to reanimate interest in pure colour often overlooked in day-to-day life by rearranging those very forgotten elements of modern existence into objects worthy of a second-look. By retaining the pulse of urban existence and channelling it into the body of long-dead Minimalism, Batchelor’s work redeems the viewer’s interest in, and the historical standing of, colour as a prevalent and essential part of contemporary life.

[edit] Sources

Batchelor, David, Chromophobia, ISBN 978-1861890740

[edit] External links


 This article about an artist from the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.