Amandas Ong
FRAME
The Charnel House by Tom de Freston
Oxford-based artist Tom de Freston is exhibiting a new series of large-scale paintings that will offer viewers a lush feast for the eyes. Featuring febrile, thick patterns of paint against calmer, flatter backgrounds, de Freston’s The Charnel House is a visual sensation, seamlessly weaving together two-headed gasping horses, light bulbs and sickly bright flowers with smooth panache. All at once disturbing but riveting, de Freston’s paintings fracture and re-assemble the narratives of the modern age, leaving us to make sense of images charged with complex meanings.
Richard Cork has mused of de Freston’s work: “Obsessed by images of humanity on the very edge of disintegration, he is audacious enough to convey our most haunted fears about a world struggling for survival in the twenty-first century.” Certainly, the presence of anthropomorphic creatures in quotidian situations creates the effect of unease and anxiety, but also draw us in with their strange, memorable beauty.
There will be an artist talk with de Freston himself next Tuesday 26 November at 7pm. The Charnel House runs from now till 11 January.
Breese Little, 30b Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DU
Images courtesy of the artist and the gallery.