Sadie Coles HQ has launched its gallery space at 1 Davies Street in Mayfair with an exhibition of new paintings by Italian-born, New York-based artist Rudolf Stingel.Spanning both the new and existing Sadie Coles HQ galleries, the exhibition features six identically-sized square paintings of moments in the everyday lives of animals in their natural settings.Reproducing and magnifying images derived from a vintage German calendar, the seemingly photorealistic paintings are rendered in the same palette or faded colour of the source material.The regional animals depicted in the paintings include an owl, a fox, a rabbit, a fish, as well as a woodpecker extending its head from a hole in a tree trunk.At first glance the works appear to conform to the traditions of photorealism, but a closer look reveals an incongruously textural surface composed of a fine system of accrued brushstrokes.“Rudolf Stingel” at Sadie Coles HQ is a continuation of the artist’s ongoing interrogation of the painterly medium and its status, nature, and context.According to the gallery, Stingel “examines painting’s capacity to translate and transform a photographic image, creating works that oscillate “between emotiveness and banality.”Through the prisms of process and pictorialism, Stingel has created a series of evocative and entrancing meditations on the universal themes of memory and time.“Rudolf Stingel” is at the Sadie Coles HQ galleries at 1 Davies St London W1 and 62 Kingly St London W1 until December 18, 2015
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