ADMSP Sculptors and Sculptures Series: David Batchelor

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David Batchelor (born 1955, Dundee) is a Scottish artist, writer, and a Senior Tutor in Critical Theory in the Department of Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in London.

We would love to have at least one of Batchelor’s works on display at ADMSP.

See more of his work here…

David Batchelor studied Fine Art at Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham (1975–8), and Cultural Theory at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham University (1978–80). He has exhibited widely in the UK, continental Europe, the United States and Latin America; written two books, Minimalism (1997) and Chromophobia (2000), is the editor of Colour (2008) and contributed to a number of journals including Artscribe, Frieze (magazine), and Artforum. David was a member of Tate Britain Council from 2002-5, an advisory body on development and programming at Tate Britain.

He has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including the British Art Show at SNGMA in Edinburgh, Days Like These: Tate Triennial of Contemporary Art at Tate Britain, the 26th São Paulo Biennale, Extreme Abstraction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Folkestone Triennial in Folkestone and Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate Liverpool. He is represented by Wilkinson Gallery in London and Galerie Leme in São Paulo.

David Batchelor makes sculptural installations from objects found in the streets of London, hollowed, stacked and given a new life as empty but brightly coloured light boxes or as unlit composites. Consistent throughout his works is the lurking familiarity of the material leftovers of modern life, from factory scrap to disused or broken domestic items, re-purposed into hypnotic, beautifully patterned objects presenting a distillation of colour’s presence in our everyday environment.

“When I make works from light boxes (such as Brick Lane Remix, 2003), or old plastic bottles with lights inside, I hope the illumination suspends their objecthood to some degree and makes the viewer see them a little differently – see them as colours before seeing them as objects.” The brightest possible palette fills the range of neon-lit columns, modular crates, spherical shapes, and unlit clusters (such as Parapillar, 2006), the artist’s “vehicles for colour.”

Batchelor is interested in reconsidering colour theories from a contemporary context, which he explores in Chromophobia (2000), a book dedicated to the subject. His dazzlingly saturated objects reconsider the tension between form and the very materiality of colour, perhaps with a wink to earlier forms of light and neon art. “I often use colour to attack form, to break it down a little or begin to dissolve it. But I am not at all interested in ‘pure’ colour or in colour as a transcendental presence… So if I use colours to begin to dissolve forms, I also use forms to prevent colours becoming entirely detached from their everyday existence.”

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2010
Chromophilia,Paco Imperial, Rio de Janeiro

2008
Backlights, Galeria Leme, Sao Paulo

2007
Unplugged (Remix),Wilkinson Gallery, London

2006
South Bank Spectrum,South Bank Centre,Christmas Lights Commission, London

2005
Ten Silhouettes, Gloucester Road Underground Station, London

2004
Shiny Dirty. Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.

2003
The Spectrum of Hackney Road, Wilkinson Gallery, London.

2002
Barrier, 38 Langham Street, London.

2001
Shiny-Dirty, Habitat, London.

2000
Electric Colour Tower, Sadlers Wells, London.
Apocalypstick, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London.

1998
Monochromobiles, The Economist Plaza, London.

1997
Shelf-Like, Frame-Like, Note-Like, Byam Shaw School of Art, London.
Polymonochromes, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.

1996
Polymonochrome Drawings, Soho House, London.

1995
Serial Colour, Curtain Road Arts, London.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2011
Shape Of Things To Come: New Sculpture, Saatchi Gallery, London

2010
Kupferstichkabinett: Between Thought and Action,White Cube, London
Open Light in Private Spaces: Biennale fur Internationale Lichtkunst,multiple venues, Unna, Germany
The Gathering,Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Party, New Art Gallery, Walsall
A Twighlight Art
Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York

2009
Presque Rein III,Laure Genillard Gallery, London
Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, Tate Liverpool
Kaleidoscopic Revolver,Hanjiyun Contemporary Space, Beijing
Total Museum, Seoul
Better than Grey
Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery

2008
Sculpture from the Scrapyard,Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Conversations,Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
Irony & Gesture, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
Folkestone Triennial,various venues, Folkestone
Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, Museum of Modern Art, New York

2007
David Batchelor & Nikolai Suetin,Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh
Shifting Ground,Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham
Echo Room, Alcala 31, Madrid
Abstraction: Extracting From the World, Millenium Galleries, Sheffiled

2006
A noir, E blanche, I rouge, U vert, O blue: Farben,Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Germany
Edinburgh Art Festival,off-site projects at the Palm House, Botanic Gardens and Old School, Edinburgh
Thread, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh
Backdrop, Bloomberg Space, London

2005
Radiance,Off-site projects in the Merchants’ Quarter, Glasgow
Double Meaning,Galeria Leme,Sao Paulo, Brazil
Extreme Abstraction,Albright Knox Art Gallery,Buffalo, New York
Contrabandistas de Imágenes,Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile
Untitled,Marc Selwyn Gallery, Los Angeles

2004
26th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo
Sodium and Asphelt, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City
Some Versions of Light, The Telephone Repeater Station, Richmond, North Yorkshire
Chromosexuals, Galleri Bouhlou, Bergen
One Night Stand, Pearl at El Montan Motor Hotel

2003
In Good Form: Recent Sculpture from the Arts Council Collection, Longside Gallery
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Primary Colours, City Gallery, Leicester
Embargo, Aubery Square, London
Days Like These, Tate Triennale, Tate Britain.

2002
Furori Uso, Ferrotel, Pescara, Italy.
Colour Love, Johnson County Comunity College, Kansas.
New Religious Art, Liverpool Biennal, Liverpool.

2001
Ruby, PEARL, London
The Magic Hour: Art and Las Vegas, Neue Galerie, Graz, curated by Alez Farquharson.
Other Britannia, FundacionMarcelino Botin, Santander, Spain.
Amidst Concrete, Clay and General Decay, Konstfack Gallery, Stockholm
Millenium Commision, Norwich Gallery, Norwich.
Other Britannia, TeclaSala, Barcelona.

2000
Perdify, La Tourette, France and Kettles Yard, Cambridge.
British Art Show 5, Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff, Birmingham.
Fact and Value, Charlottenberg Palace, Copenhagen.
Give and Take, Jerwood Space, London

1999
Limit Less, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (curated by Matthew Higgs).
POSTMARK: An Abstract Effect, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico.

1998
Then and Now, Lisson Gallery, London.

1997
East International, The Sainsbury Centre/Norwich School of Art, Norwich.

1996
Station Transformation, Central Bus Station, Tel Aviv.
Abstractions, Byam Shaw, Concourse Gallery, London

1993
Victoria Miro Gallery, London.

1990
Approaches to Realism, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; Goldsmiths Gallery, London.
Rotation, Esther Schipper Gallery, Cologne.

These images and video are used for fair use and demonstration purposes only.