Chloe Early at Stolen Space

Chloe Early at Stolen Space

09 November, 2009
by: Katuschka

I briefly escaped London once, moving to a one-street town outside Edinburgh where cows would occasionally wander into our garden and scare the living bejesus out of you as you drank your morning coffee. I didn't last long, and it's hardly surprising; city living kicks arse; you can get food any time of night, you can ignore your neighbours, a cynical demeanour is practically de rigeur and the only cows you're likely to encounter are on pub signs or on a plate. Good times indeed.

But there is a certain malaise that comes with city life from time to time. Landlocked, dwarfed by tower blocks and adrift in a sea of glass and steel, it's possible to feel a little lost, but well, who cares, because we also have fantastic artists to address these philosophical quandaries in one of our many cutting-edge galleries.

Brick Lane gallery Stolen Space is well-renowned for its high-calibre exhibitions, and Chloe Early's Clouded Apollo is no exception. Early paints slumbering figures set against darkening backdrops of tanks, tower blocks and scaffolding. Her gorgeous work is like the twilight zone of a waking dream, where palm trees grow out of pristine modernist architecture and shards of bomb blasts become circus fireworks.


Chloe Early, 'Clouded Apollo'

Her work reconciles the external world with the individual, articulating the disenfranchisement of the city with pitch-perfect imagery. By moving the totems of urban life into the background whilst her figures are seemingly oblivious of their intrusion, Early imbues the paintings with the kind of environmental tunnel vision that city-dwellers adopt in their daily life. The figures – serene in bikinis and sunhats – evoke the glossy rent-a-paradise of advertisements, making them seem complacent, jaded with the chaos, bringing them to life as characters despite their kitsch appeal.

Early paints using oil on coloured aluminium and Perspex, which gives the paintings a flawless luminosity. Her talent is evident in her use of perspective, skilful figure drawing and sophisticated themes juxtaposed with the precision of a happily mad scientist. Her work has the hectic dystopian styling of Rosson Crow's work, with added whimsy and a funkier colour palette. The buildings seem as if they are on the periphery of consciousness, intruding into the rose-hued daydreams like your 6am alarm clock, shattering the reveries of flowers, animals and airplanes into a violent mass of riotously coloured Freudian ectoplasm

Powerful, beautiful work, which explodes from the walls; combined with a serious talent and competent content, it's hardly surprising that this show is receiving rave reviews from both sides of the Atlantic. Early's work is rife with dichotomies: calming and exhilarating, personal and impersonal, welcoming but disconcerting; taking the world around us and reflecting a version that's easier to swallow. Frankly it's fan-bloody-tastic, and something even the most cynical city-dweller couldn't fail to warm to.

Chloe Early, 'Clouded Apollo', is at Stolen Space until 29th November 2009.

Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here to see all London painting exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in Whitechapel.

Katuschka