David Hepher

Concrete Elegy  

Flowers Gallery

October 20—December 10, 2016

In his forty-year long career, the British artist David Hepher receives his first exhibition in the United States, introducing his paintings of high-rise façades from South London here on the other side of the Atlantic. Spanning the past two decades in the artist’s long career, the works on view at Flowers Gallery will include mixed media collages for which he applies architectural materials such as concrete and spray paint onto canvas. Another noteworthy series in the artist’s practice is Pavement Horizons, including paintings of often-overlooked junctions where sidewalks meet building walls on every street. 

“Graffiti was a way of painting about the people who lived on the estate without painting them directly. The marks they left behind seemed to me an appropriate way of suggesting the human side of these buildings,” stated Hepher in a piece published on The Guardian in January 2015. Alongside graffiti, building façades, windows, and balconies all stand out to encapsulate the panorama in many urban landscapes. Chronicling London’s rapidly evolving architectural texture since the ‘60s, the artist’s paintings, some of which are in prestigious collections such as Tate Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, will remain on view through December 10th for the New York audience.