Tsioris - Teague

Line Languages

23rd February - 7th March 2022

Encounter and Richeldis Fine Art are delighted to present ‘Line Languages’ a dual exhibition of acclaimed international artists Alexi Tsioris (Athens, 1982) and Struan Teague (Edinburgh, 1991) opening on Wednesday 23rd of February. At the core of the show is a reflection on the act of drawing as a central strategy for painting, a mutual sensibility for its rhythms and slippages, directness and vulnerability. Through experimental processes of making and formal invention, both Tsioris and Teague place emphasis on the linear as a fundamental vernacular in their works. The directness of automatist mark making is for both artists a fertile ground for creative exploration. As such, line functions as a key foundational support within the architecture of their works. Echoing the discovery of an archaeological site first brought to light, the artists’ layered canvases also invite a process of unearthing through close observation.

Tsioris’s paintings, drawings and sculptures carve out an intriguing visual vocabulary bound up in the corporeal and the symbolic. The exhibition will combine a series of previously unseen paintings and drawings with important sculptural works created over the last seven years. In Tsioris’s innovative material practice, repeated motifs and symbols merge and overlap to form complex and amorphous figures. These undulating bodies of lines are outpourings of imagination, energetically drawn from Tsioris’ ‘private alphabet’. This rich visual archive moves between classical statuary, mythological tales and contemporary cartoons, forming the basis of each new work. Whereas his sculptural forms in plaster, aluminium and bronze explore an instinctive material process of addition and subtraction, other formal concerns of surface and ground are key to both Tsioris’s paintings and drawings. In his ‘sgraffito’ paintings the canvas is primed and polished numerous times, building up multiple layers of paint before it is scratched into to reveal the base below. This painterly process marks an intriguing reversal of Tsioris’s prolific printmaking series, in which the textured lines of a printing plate are built up on the paper in converging layers of ink. Through these varied material methods, Tsioris plays with the idea of production through erasure. As Dr Michael Semff comments, the paintings become ‘reductions that release matter’.

In his most recent series of paintings and drawings, the tempos and tides of Teague’s poetic compositions generate alternate spaces of investigation. Configured from quiet shapes of light and shadow, accumulated marks and remembered traces, the artist’s restrained compositions dance between the miniature and monumental. ‘Line Languages’ marks Teague’s first significant exhibition in the UK for three years. Often working with combinations of graphite pencils, conté pastels and oil pigment sticks the artist builds upon accidental marks such as stains and folds found in the canvasses’ material as a starting point for his abstract compositions. Frequently Teague works from old photographs and drawings, the memory of which ebb and flow into his painting’s suggestions. A branches’ shadow against a pool, a shard of light on a sun dappled wall. The artist composes offbeat patterns from nuanced gatherings of marks, transposing the peripheral and the overlooked into a contemplative space.

‘Line Languages’ runs until 7th of March at Copeland Gallery in Peckham.

Planning your Visit

Line Languages will be held at Copeland Gallery, Unit 9, 133 Copeland Road, SE15 3SN.

Opening Times: Tuesday to Saturday 11am - 6pm or by appointment.

Artists

Alexi Tsioris

Alexi Tsioris (1982) was born in Athens, lives and works in Munich. In his artistic work, Alexi Tsioris concentrates on the mediums of drawing, painting, monotype, and sculpture. Through these, the artist pursues one idea in particular: he layers bodies and figures, thus reproducing what is individual in the corporeal and symbolically turning the human being inside out. In his painting, engravings in layers of oil paint expose colors and forms, supplemented with an abundance of ornamentation. After the artist had already been awarded the Art Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 2011, he also received the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize for Fine Arts in 2019. Recent solo and group exhibitions include; 'Line Languages' Encounter & Richeldis Fine Art, London (2022), 'Art Cologne' Jahn und Jahn, Cologne (2021), 'Fermata', Encounter, London (2021), ‘Relief and Drawing’, Arnoldi Livie, Munich (2021), ‘Alexi Tsioris,’ Livie Fine Art, Zurich (2020), 'Forget (Don't Forget Your Mask II)', Jahn und Jahn, Munich (2020), ‘Cosmic Fruits,’ Jahn und Jahn, Munich (2020), 'HAP trifft Mamma Andersson', Kunstmuseum Reitlingen, Reutlingen (2019), ‘Fluss ohne Ufer’, Kunstpavillon, Munich (2018), 'The way you read a book is different to how I tell you a story', Jahn & Jahn, Munich (2018), 'Art Brussels', Jahn und Jahn, Belgium (2018), ‘Belladonna,’ Artothek. Bildersaal, Munich (2017), 'Salon International Des Arts' Paris, (2017), ‘Flaum & Splitter,’ Galerie Jahn, Munich (2015), 'Liquid Havana' Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck (2015), ‘Attic Studio,’ Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich (2015). Tsioris's work can be found in important collections internationally.

Struan Teague

Struan Teague (b.1991, Edinburgh) lives and works in London. Teague’s work is characterised by quick and intuitive mark making with using simple materials. Abstract compositions draw on a sensory experience of rhythm and space with shifting qualities of light and energy. Recent solo exhibitions include Slow Disturbance, Spazio Orr, Brescia (2020), Nil NIl, Galerie Miquel Alzueta, Barcelona (2019), The unbearable lightness of being, The Court, Italy, (2018), Say something, Galerie Kernal, Spain (2017). Recent Group exhibitions include Pathways on Paper, South Parade, London (2022), Miradas Del Norte, Galeria Kernel (2021), Permafrost, Fox Jensen Gallery, Sydney (2019) Artist Rooms, Encounter and Richeldis Fine Art, London (2019), Twenty Four, Bricks Gallery, Copenhagen (2019), Zona Maco, Galerie Miquel Alzueta, Mexico (2019), Abstract - Reality, The Saatchi Gallery, UK (2018), Markers, Encounter Contemporary, London (2017), Attitudes in Painting, Lepsien Art Foundation, Germany (2017). Teague’s work is represented in numerous public and private collections internationally.