Last Chance To Catch Baptiste Ibar's Debut Solo Show

By SamF Last edited 143 months ago
Last Chance To Catch Baptiste Ibar's Debut Solo Show

This Saturday is your last chance to visit one of London’s most eccentric debut solo shows for some time.

Upon entering Before Your Eyes (Busts), tucked away in the back room of the macabre and wonderful Last Tuesday Society Gallery, your eyes are instantly drawn to the back wall and its hand-painted mural. This work, the brainchild of both the artist Baptiste Ibar and the curators Lauren Jones and Alix Janta (of Art Barter), underpins the main body of work with coherent motifs yet illuminates the room with the sheer audacity and scale of the piece. Rumour has it that the artist completed the work in a three-hour frenzy, working with emotions stimulated by his own work around him

It is unusual to find such daring and brazen work in a debut show. It is this sense of daring that makes the entire body of work so attractive. Ibar has explored the notion of animalistic spirituality within the common form of bust portraiture. There is a freedom of expression and delightful madness to the shapes and colours that pour from the portraits' perceived auras. The gallery offers a superb backdrop for this dialogue, with a permanent taxidermy exhibition downstairs and an air of maniacal weirdness to the whole establishment.

This is a most unusual exhibition that will sadly be closing its doors come Saturday night. The mural will be destroyed, so this really does offer one last chance to see this work as it was first intended to be seen. The gallery is open from 11am-8pm and with both Netil and Broadway markets stationed just around the corner you really couldn’t hope for a better Easter Saturday in East London.

The Last Tuesday Society is at 11 Mare Street  London  E8 4RP.

Photo by Sam Frankl.

Last Updated 06 April 2012