The Skin I Live In

January 8 - February 7, 2017

Jonathan Baldock

Press Release

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery is pleased to present The Skin I Live In, the first New York solo exhibition by London based artist Jonathan Baldock.

In The Skin I Live In, a title borrowed from an Almódovar film, Baldock presents new sculptures and wall works that further his engagement and exploration into both the physical and conceptual conditions of the human body. Employing materials that include steel, polystyrene, felt, thread, dolls eyes, and ceramics into biomorphic forms and abstracted shapes, Baldock considers the dualities and relationships between interior and exterior, applied and fine arts, surface and volume while hand crafting these corporeal works.

Examining not only the nuances of materiality, gesture and form, Baldock also proposes a dialogue between sculpture, theater, dance and music through the works in this exhibition. Using Bauhaus Ballet, Dadaism, and the work of the Surrealists as variant points of departure in his practice, Baldock deftly balances and reconfigures these influences from one piece to the next, creating almost fetishized characters within the gallery stage set. Psychological tensions slip in and out of Baldock’s work, marking them as potential sites for layered polarities to emerge and exist. The sculptures and wall works circuitously drift between dual states: attraction and repulsion, the occult and mainstream, the physical and theoretical. Through these aspects, Baldock’s surreal and character-driven narratives become transformed and displaced, unhinging and challenging any predetermined set of expectations the viewer may have.

Jonathan Baldock (b. 1980) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2005 and lives and works in London. He has exhibited internationally at Vitrine (London), Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, Chapter (Cardiff), The Apartment (Vancouver), Wysing Arts Centre (Cambridge, UK), PeregrineProgram (Chicago), Cell Projects (London), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) (Toronto), Ceri Hand Gallery (London), Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg, and Saatchi Gallery (London). Additionally he has received international awards and residencies, including: Abbey Fellowship, British School in Rome, Italy (2013); Residency – The Forest, Wysing Art Centre Cambridge, UK (2012); and Skowhegan, School of Painting and Sculpture Residency, Maine, USA (2007). In 2016 he will be collaborating with Emma Hart on his first large publicly commissioned exhibition touring to the De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill), PEER Gallery (London) and The Grundy (Blackpool) (2017).