dianne tanzer gallery + projects is proud to present a solo exhibition with artist Juan Ford. As noted by Art Collector magazine, Ford’s work is an example of why realist painting is so popular these days. He combines technical virtuosity with current ideas to create artworks that are strikingly contemporary.
With an increase in critical, curatorial and collector interest, Ford’s environmental commentary redefines the way we think about Australian landscape. Ford has always sought to pioneer a path through and beyond various predicaments of painted representation, in a constantly evolving series of projects. For the past 6 years he has focused on inverting paradigms of the Australian landscape tradition, while genuinely seeking engagement with it. In what began as an experiment, the conventions of landscape, botanical illustration and figuration were seized, upended and collided energetically, producing new and unexpected results.
Thus from the ashes of these stale and defiantly outdated traditions of painterly realism, new possibilities arise. In this series, native Australian flora have been collected and bound crudely to form rudimentary figures, confusing the distinctions between portraits, landscapes and botanical representations. From these rearrangements of genre, painstakingly rendered paintings are created.