Ian McKeever Temple Paintings 2004 - 2006

Ian McKeever has developed a pictorial language which is unique in British painting. It has brought him considerable international acclaim while simultaneously setting him apart from his peers and defying neat categorisation.

This is the first British exhibition of McKeever’s monumental series, the Temple Paintings, which were produced between 2004 and 2006. They reveal the artist’s continuing interest in exploring a visual language that oscillates between figuration and abstraction, but which is neither narrative nor symbolic. With their distinctive quality of suggesting transparency and emerging light, the paintings are built up using layer upon layer of transparent paint to establish structures which at times appear to hover and float between a sense of presence and absence while evoking residual bodily form.

The impetus for the Temple Paintings arose from McKeever's visit to China in 2004, and the profound impact that the traditional Buddhist temples had on the artist, in particular, the disjunction between the heavy physical architecture of the temples and their ostensible role as places of the spirit.  In reference to this quality Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton writes in the 2009 essay on McKeever, "[The Temple Paintings] are concerned first and foremost with painting and within that endeavour the expression of fullness - of experience and consciousness."

The accompanying monograph, Ian McKeever Paintings is the first in depth overview of the artist's work and has been published by Lund Humphries to coincide with the opening of the exhibition at Kings Place Gallery. Presenting a multi-layered discussion of McKeever’s significant body of paintings, the book includes essays by Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton, Michael Tucker and Catherine Lampert exploring the evolution and complexities of the artist's oeuvre. A prolific writer, the artist’s own words also feature in this thorough analysis of his work.
Lund Humphries: 110 colour and 45 b&w illustrations, 208 pages. Hardback. Exhibition Price £30.00 plus P&P.

On Sunday 6 September, during the Kings Place Festival, Ian McKeever and Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton will discuss the genesis of the artist’s distinctive work; the significance of body, structure and architectural relationships, and the evolution of the Temple Paintings.
Sunday 6 September at 12:30, St Pancras Room, Level -2, Kings Place
Tickets £4.50 from Kings Place Box Office 0207 520 1490 and online at www.kingsplace.co.uk

Ian McKeever was born in 1946 in Withernsea, East Yorkshire. He was guest Professor at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt and is now visiting Professor at the University of Brighton. In 2006 he was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools of Art, London. McKeever has exhibited extensively in Europe, Scandinavia and America and his work is represented in numerous collections including the Tate, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk.

Ian McKeever Temple Paintings, from 4 September – 17 October 2009, is part of the Kings Place Festival celebrating the first anniversary of Kings Place Gallery.
Exhibition open: Monday to Friday 10am – 6pm, Saturday and Sunday 12 – 6pm. Admission Free.

Further details from Nicola Euden
T 0207 520 1485 E kpg@kingsplace.co.uk W www.kingsplace.co.uk

http://www.ianmckeever.com