Dominic Shepherd: 'In the Country of the Blind'

Galerie Schuster will present British artist Dominic Shepherd with his first one person exhibition in Germany at Galerie Schuster Berlin in association with CHARLIE SMITH london.

Known for his lyrical paintings of interwoven, dreamlike landscapes, Shepherd’s work draws on personal and historical mythologies that relate to magic, memory and Englishness. Shepherd’s paintings evoke a sense of other worldliness that is poetic and dreamlike but fraught with underlying threat. Populated by mysterious characters who reveal themselves whilst cavorting, performing rites of passage or standing firm as if to present to us the ways of this strange world, magicians, skeletons, figurines, pearly kings, harlequins and unclothed innocents show us a place of folk and ritual. But within these apparent idylls lurks an implied menace. Solitude, stillness, death, madness and the threat of a cruel and bizarre nature also lie here.

Creating a unique, enchanting and hallucinogenic alternative reality, Shepherd’s work is a direct response to his immediate environment combined with a consistent longing to voyage into the recesses of his own imagination, where authentic and fictional combine and compete. With his studio and home found in a clearing surrounded by natural lakes and woodlands, Shepherd’s landscapes often begin with actual locations experienced in the artist’s daily life and then fuse with an internalised vision, whilst characters recall family members or romantic heroes of the past. Combined, we are shown a liminal place between life and death; madness and sanity; imagination and reality; horror and beauty; trepidation and curiosity; fear and abandonment.


Galerie Schuster
Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin, Germany

Private View
Friday May 1st

Exhibition Date
Saturday May 2nd – Saturday June 13th 2009


Biographical:

Born 1966

Education: MA in Painting, Chelsea College of Art and Design, 1995 – 1996; BA (Hons) in Painting, Chelsea College of Art and Design, 1985 - 1988

Selected Exhibitions: The Future Can Wait, Old Truman Brewery, London, 2007 & 2008; Meeting Place, Russell Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth 2004; John Moores 23, Walker Art Gallery, 2004; Made in England, Vasby Kunsthall, Stockholm, 1999; Art in the 90’s: Pure Fantasy, Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, 1997

Selected Awards: John Moores 23, Visitors Choice Prize, 2004; Oppenheim-John Downes Trust Award, 2000; Oppenheim-John Downes Trust Award , 1999; Liquitex Excellence in Art Award, 1995; SEA Young Artist of 1992

Collections: Paula Granoff, Providence, Rhode Island; Steve Shane, NYC; Markus Winzer, Untersiemau