19 January - 23 February 2008
For his third show at Sadie Coles HQ, American artist JP Munro presents an ambitious collection of new paintings. In his work, Munro reinterprets myths and legends, many of which have been previously realised by canonical artists such as Titian, Delacroix, and Moreau.
With epic overtones and elaborate costumes, Munro’s work is often spoken about in terms of the cinematic, more specifically film posters, at once telling all and none of the story. Film posters possess a ceremonial air that find echo in the intensity of detail and complexity of composition found in Munro’s works.
Endowed with a distinctively contemporary edge, Munro’s paintings border on pastiche, and it quickly becomes apparent that, although of undeniable interest, it is not so much the subject matter composed of derivative themes that counts, but rather how it provides, in the artist’s own words, ‘a way into moving coloured pigment around.’
Thematically, Munro’s new pieces do not mark a significant departure, but rather there is a shift in his use of colour. His palette here is darker, richer, and while the works depict episodes that have taken place across various centuries and continents, they are aesthetically unified by tone. The fiery reds applied in the Battle of Cadore accentuate the scene’s gritty violence and durable presence and it is exemplary of the way in which the artist works. Taking a painting by Italian Renaissance painter Titian entitled The Battle of Spoleto that was lost in a fire in 1577, Munro, intrigued by the idea of ‘a battle on a bridge’, fuses elements of Titian’s own drawings with copies of the painting by the Old Master’s contemporaries as well as his own personal impressions. Incredibly congested, this panorama contrasts with his depiction of the Biblical story the Temple of Solomon. Munro shows Israel’s first house of the Lord as a depleted yet affluent place with a gold interior archway and ornate surroundings. Starting with visual symbols from freemasonic structures the artist then combines them with knowledge from archive drawings and diagrams, to create an ominous yet enticing entrance. Meanwhile Heracles in the Garden of the Hesperides captures the moment before Heracles is to slain the serpent. The scene beholds an overall feeling of stillness and containment and yet is still ill at ease as all four Hesperides are turned towards Heracles aghast at what will happen next.
JP Munro was born in 1975 in Inglewood, California. He lives in Los Angeles, California. His work has been exhibited widely including as part of the Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night, New York, and at the ICA, London, 2004.
7July - 27 August 2005: The Foundations of the Twenty-first Century
‘I enjoy picking at that wound of not knowing visually what something means. I remember, growing up, I never understood any paintings, what they meant or why that subject had been chosen…So I think I enjoy that…fear, almost, of looking at an image.’
JP Munro quoted by Murray Healy in ‘In Deeper Reference Praise’, POP, Autumn / Winter 2004
JP Munro’s paintings zoom in on history, illustrating selected moments and acting out scenes from mythology. Emperors and their lackeys peer into tombs, warriors engage in bloody battles, and figures indulge in pagan rites and mass orgies. The bodies are often the rich golden colour of sandstone, lending them a statue-like quality that compounds their sense of history.
In one of Munro’s latest paintings, the Battle of the Hydaspes plays out as a mass of flailing limbs and naked torsos engaged in violent combat; figures brandish swords and spears and seek protection beneath shields, their blood red capes swirling and horses rearing against a fiery sunset. In Orgy Chamber, the sea of bodies writhes in ecstasy in a palatial setting of sumptuous greens and reds, bathed in the sensuous glow of lanterns. The unpopulated scenes offer a contrasting calm, such as a study of wonderously intriguing rock formations in caves, cast in an eerie subterranean light. Elsewhere Munro zooms in on dense, rampant tropical vegetation; only the title, Green Jungle Hell, suggests a threatening undercurrent, and with it a hint of the narratives played out in his other paintings.
Fantastically ornate and painted with rich, opulent colours, JP Munro’s paintings are peppered with art historical references. At the same time, his aesthetic is thoroughly individual and contemporary. His paintings swing from decadence to trash, from the macabre to hedonistic pleasure.
This is JP Munro’s second exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ. In 2004, he was in a three person exhibition at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow and was included in 100 Artists See God at ICA, London.
27 November to 11 January 2003: Ending is Better than Mending
In his first show for Sadie Coles HQ the young Los Angeles-based artist JP Munro, presents a selection of new paintings.
JP Munro has succeeded in developing a thoroughly modern take on the genre of history painting. Working in oil, his palette of somber and sumptuous colours are those favoured during the Renaissance: deep blues and rich reds, with touches of opulent Byzantine golds. His subjects range from Napoleonic portraits to battle fields, extending into the realms of fantasy with depictions of mythical and mythological scenes and creatures. But while the influences of the canon remain so clear, in broad terms and with specific citations, the works never risk slipping into a form of pastiche by having a firm aesthetic of their own. Influences from the past are cross-fertilised to create improbable hybrids that are brought up to date through the introduction of elements from punk rock and heavy metal album covers, the style of graphic novels and the worlds of science fiction and MTV.
While the attention to costume detail and the portentous pose of the sitters upholds the traditions of society portraiture and history painting, this is disturbed by the odd juxtapositions between subjects and their surroundings. Members of the nobility are not seen in their drawing rooms but are presented in caves surrounded by stalactites or next to ornate Indian temples. The palor of their skin has its origins in historical fashions but the hint of the cyborg in their features betrays a modern influence. A king of colossal proportions sits on his throne, in all his finery, crowned with the laurel leaves of a Roman emperor and cloaked in the ermin of Henry VIII, his inhumanly large shoulders detracting attention from the webbed feet protruding from beneath his robes. Similarly the dignity of the Napoleonic soldiers is undermined by the mannerist inspired mass of writhing figures at their feet and the overall scene is not one of military glory but of gore and depravity. Even the most Arcadian landscapes have been darkened to a degree that renders them apocalyptic. In Munro’s painting, all that could appear sublime has become somehow threatening, bordering on the degenerate.