Henry Hudson, 'Frankfurt Art', 2008
Laurence Owen, 'Portrait of the Artist', 2008
Described by Richard Dorment as 'astonishing young painters', Laurence Owen and Henry Hudson follow the back roads and dirty alleyways into the dark recesses of the English psyche, toying with our national treasures in an unsettling way. What we esteem in the artistic canon Owen merrily defaces, what we cherish as innocent and pure Hudson sullies with all the guilt and perversity of our adult desires. Nursery rhymes are married with porn, Renoir's little girl gushes menstrual blood.
Both Hudson and Owen revel in the messiness of paint. The surfaces of Hudson's canvases are literally scratched; some appear to be incomplete. Hudson's medium is plasticine, which he melts over a heater to create a gloop that he can manipulate as if it were oil paint. Owen draws out the beauty from the mundane with a deft use of form and colour. The tension between his love for the controlled, painstaking and monotonous process of traditional oil painting, and the conflicting desire to break free of its constraints, gives his work a playful and rebellious energy.
Owen and Hudson both stand on the edge of the abyss of the modern consciousness and peer into it with boyish curiosity. They drag up and put on display the weird creatures most of us would rather ignore. They question the nature of what we treasure, what we cherish, what we should we value in today's moral and cultural wilderness.
These artists may reference the renaissance but they use tradition to explore the issues and secrets of our modern nation. What conceptual art for so long put off these new painters are taking head on: they are grappling again with the medium of the titans.
A Prayer for the Procrastinator: Paintings by Henry Hudson and Laurence Owen
22 May - 10 June
Cosa Gallery
19 - 23 Bethnal Green Road
London, E16JU
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