Press Release

Billy Childish at segantinis hut

Neugerriemschneider Gallery
Linienstraße 155, 10115 Berlin

21st February - 4th April 2015

We are pleased to announce our third solo exhibition with Billy Childish (b. 1959), opening on February 20 and on view at the gallery until April 4. Here, Childish will present new paintings created within the context of his existential engagement with nature and the human experience.

In late summer of last year, Billy Childish spent an extended period of time in Engadin, discovering the unique alpine landscape of the mythical mountain valley. Childish, a keen hill-walker, is constantly taken aback by the beauty and incalculability of mountainous surroundings, translating these experiences and memories into his newest works. The large format at segantinis hut, sitting (2014) pictures the artist and his son, Huddie shortly after their ascent to Giovanni Segantini's cabin. "This painting is not actually a portrate, it is all about love and relationship," says Childish, ' . . . it is about any father and son and their enjoyment of each other and the miracle of life." This theme is continued in father and son at segantinis hut version (2014). In beneath the sky (2014) the artist paints a darker picture of his involvement with the mountains - lying in front of a panorama of towering peaks, Childish's solitary form rests on the ground as the earth appears to slowly consume his motionless body. The self-portrait wearing edelweiß (2014) shows Childish with frozen facial features, giving him a nearly statuesque, un-living appearance, his lapel adorned with an edelweiss flower which was given to him by the inn lady at Segantini's hut. While Childish uses his Engadin inspired motifs to portray battles against the elements and one's own limits, he also illustrates harmony with nature with high atlas walker (2014) and juniper tree (2014), creating retrospective impressions of his hikes through the Atlas Mountains a few years ago.

With the work title 'the people who stand still,' version (2014), Billy Childish alludes to the transcendental spirituality of trees - the name is a translation of the Sioux American Indian word for tree. The painting offers a view of a massive tree trunk, pictured against harvested fields and a mountainous backdrop as a symbol of isolation. As this painting references Vincent van Goth, Childish's view of Mount Fuji, mount fuji with cloud, version (2014), pays homage to Hirochige. Its fiery red coloration creates an allegorical scene of natural forces to which human efforts must give way. In the large format the white tree (2014), a surreal-seeming landscape study, the artist refers back to his childhood and his surroundings on the river Medway where the artist was born and still lives. Following Billy Childish's dedication of earlier works to his literary heroes and alter egos - among those being Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Hans Fallada, and Robert Walser, as well as pioneers of mountain climbing and the nautical - the artist brings forth an intensified personal connection in these new works. Summoning the protagonists of modern painting, Childish constantly and uncompromisingly continues to develop and expand his artistic universe.

Billy Childish is a painter, poet, and musician whose work has in the past years been featured in numerous international solo and group exhibitions at, among others, ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art in London and White Columns in New York (2010), as well as most recently at the Neue Aachener Kunstverein in Aachen, Germany for which the catalogue walking in god's buti has been published.

For further information about the exhibition as well as visual material, please contact Jan Salewski:

Tel. +49 30 288 772 77, mail@neugerriemschneider.com.