Night Gallery is thrilled to announce True Romance, an exhibition of new works by the British painter Tahnee Lonsdale. This is the artist’s first solo show at the gallery.
The paintings and sculpture presented in True Romance are born of a highly intuitive drawing practice in response to various emotional states. On canvas, Lonsdale’s compositions evolve and ethereal subjects multiply through the layering of oil paint in a technique similar to the application of colored pencil on paper. The greater mise en scène is accented with strokes of lighter hues, creating an aural impression and allowing for body language and facial expression to take central focus. With minimal, deep palettes, Lonsdale renders gestural totems of consciousness. These mystical figures are also brought into the third dimension by a new series of large, malleable soft sculptures.
True Romance is an exploration of plurality. Romance is not approached solely as an expression of externalized intimacy, but also a relationship with oneself and a higher power. Affecting and earnest, Lonsdale’s paintings seek to restore the notion of romance from a rigid aesthetic trope to a profound encounter with the soul. Celestial entities act as omniscient guides in a search for the metaphysical, inviting viewers on a journey of spirituality—as a prayer, a meditation, an energetic resonance.
Lonsdale’s tableaux depict splintered manifestations of a singular being, suggesting internal multitudes. Exaggerated limbs are heavy, as if weighed down by a divine force. Liminal movements occur throughout the artist’s newest body of work—between abstraction and figuration, heavenly and earthly planes—to evoke the pull between a godlike essence and the material conditions of daily life. The wavering physicality of each subject suggests they have transcended their human form, yet directly implicate the body in their relational and psychic experiences. Across the exhibition, Lonsdale puts forth an invocation of pathos, grounded in the belief that romance is a universal and necessary facet of personhood.
Tahnee Lonsdale (b. 1982, Reading, UK) has had solo exhibitions at Cob Gallery, London; Mine Project, Hong Kong; De Buck Gallery, New York; Dellasposa, London; and Imitate Modern, London. Lonsdale’s work has been featured in group presentations at Spazio Amanita, Los Angeles; Asia Art Center, Taipei; Public Gallery, London; The LODGE, Los Angeles; and Torrance Art Museum, CA, among others. She has participated in artist talks at De Buck Gallery, New York; Imitate Modern, London; and Shoreditch House, London. Lonsdale lives and works in Los Angeles.