Summer Show at Candid Arts

Summer Show at Candid Arts

04 September, 2009
by: Katuschka

Candid Gallery is a lovely dishevelled space tucked away behind Angel tube station, filled with enough paint-chipped doorways and irregular vintage fittings to make the most jaded hipster dribble with desire. It's only fitting that the art hanging on their walls should be suitably good-looking and their summer show is a diverse and colourful extravaganza of mixed media pieces.

Work ranges from the clinically observant to the lasciviously obscene, both charming you with its witty repartee and confronting you with oozing blobs of acrylic out of which emerges a menagerie of comic-book characters, ceramic figurines and…erm…genitalia. In fact, the show has the hormonal enthusiasm of a 17-year old boy: the series Positions shows abstract close ups of 'the money shot' and Maaike Ann Stevens' metallic canvasses in Here are optical illusions of penetration, barely obscured by a floral motif. Splayed labial orchids, Sapphic desire crudely constructed out of pins and tumescent members, which seem to watch you as you go past, all help to create a throbbing undercurrent of youthful smut.

Whilst the other art is more reserved, it is not lacking for want of penii. Pedro Baztan's car-park paintings are an eerie take on urban spaces channelling both David Hockney and Robert Bechtle. With an almost fluorescent, sci-fi lighting scheme and a studied sense of perspective, they evoke the disconnect of wilfully impersonal buildings – it's as if David Lynch is playing a theremin in your ear and occasionally going 'woooo'.

The show is full of little gems, which combine strong themes with ingenious use of existing media. A portrait constructed of library date stamps - a unique way of interpreting narrative and time; a series of cardboard perspective pieces, which conjure up images of spelunking holes or bomb blasts; kitsch china dolls rubbing shoulders with Super Mario characters; and a family portrait of Spider Man's egg sacs are just some of the endearingly odd curios that make this show so enjoyable.

It's always exciting to see new art which brims with enthusiasm and raw talent. The exhibition is by no means perfect (you get the sense that some artists would struggle in a solo show); however the heady mixture of a little-known space, price tags below £1,000 for an original piece, and socially acceptable porn make this a must-see for collectors, aficionados and perverts alike.    

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Katuschka