Artist: George Rouy

Nicola Vassell presents Endless Song, a solo exhibition of new works by the UK-based painter George Rouy, who propels his ongoing exploration into the human condition and primal emotions into a spectrum of intensity.

Within each of his vibrant and vertiginous paintings, he renders a collective of figures who ricochet, compositionally and conceptually, through a vortex of oppositional forces. Rouy is a virtuoso of the in-betweens: an undefined space where the intimate encounters the detached, the serene grazes the violent, and the platonic traces the erotic.

Defying the figurative tradition of drafting from reference and aspiring to resemblance, Rouy's practice is a process of elucidating sensations and locomotion. He begins with the concept of photography, considering the ways in which the medium distorts more than it documents, and how an oversaturation of online media can result in a pictorial blur-the abstracted image as composite memory. Thereafter, his canvases become morphing muses. He alters his subjects-defacing, refacing, and warping them-until a cryptic harmony emerges.

George Rouy (b. 1994) resides and works in Kent, UK. He received his BFA from Camberwell College of Arts in 2015. In 2019 his work was featured in Jeunes Artistes en Europe. Les Métamorphoses at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris, France. Since then, Rouy has had solo exhibitions in New York, London, Copenhagen, and Berlin. This year he was featured in X PINK 101, a group show at the X Museum in Beijing, China, and his most recent solo exhibition, Body Suit, opened in June at Hannah Barry Gallery in London. Tarmac Press also published his debut book this year, George Rouy - Selected Works 2017 - 2023. His work is in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA; Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, France; Stahl Collection, Norrkoping, Sweden; X Museum, Beijing, China; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China; M Woods, Beijing, China; and 69 Art Campus, Beijing, China. Rouy's paintings engage the body so that amorphous shapes reveal abstract human forms. Throughout his work, ambiguity supports his investigations of historic portraiture in conversation with contemporary socio-cultural attributes.