PRESS RELEASE
Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray
Secci, Milan, 01 April – 20 May 2022
Eduardo Secci is pleased to present the two-person show Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, in the gallery spaces in Milan, from April 1 to May 20, 2022. The exhibition opens at the same time as the art fair miart (from April 1 to 3, 2022), in which Eduardo Secci participates, dedicating the booth to the two artists.
Daniel Crews-Chubb's poetics originates from the repetition of figurative motifs that become an investigation instrument of the same painting act. His subjects - widely inspired by representations of different cultures belonging to various eras - are characterized by the enveloping poses and can allude to several references, ranging from ancient sculptures of deities to the action figures with which he played as a child up to expressions of the contemporary. The artist intervenes for numerous layers on rough canvases, scratching and using oil, acrylic, spray paint, sand, charcoal, and pastel. The surface, defined by a long stratification process, is important to him as the depicted image.
In exploring the human figure, Kevin Francis Gray instead focuses on the tactile dimension of marble, trigging a sense of delicacy into the ability to shape it, which reveals the will to elicit intimate reflections. Sculpting veiled limbs and faces with emphasized features, he acts in a liminal space between abstraction and figuration, movement and stasis. His vast imagination draws on personal cultural heritage, combined with literary and philosophical references.
The occasion creates a dialogue between paintings by Daniel Crews-Chubb and sculptures by Kevin Francis Gray with a common visual vocabulary that combines the figurative and the abstract. The works by the English painter and Irish sculptor dissect the matter through different techniques, stimulating intense psychological introspections. The observer is thus encouraged to contemplate them intensely and immerse themselves in their volumes, hollows, and details, abandoning themselves to a whirlwind path of myths, appearances reveling themselves and then disappearing, colors, and elaborate textures.