Bringing together paintings developed over recent years, whereby the Swedish artist has created her own 'generative system' to create imagery that allows narratives and visuals to emerge through a theatrical staging that allows for repetition, variation, and (perhaps most importantly) play.
Handmade props have become a central part of Herbst's process, whereby objects are (re)arranged, (re)used, and expanded into an ever-evolving visual language that thereafter informs the paintings. What began as a modest collection of paper drawings (or props) has developed into a self-contained world that shifts and reshapes with each new articulation, so there is a hidden language - or game of whispers - for Herbst to explore before the painting process begins. Meaning is generated through placement, timing, and subtle transformation; paintings are created through a careful (but also incidental) response to that performative process.
Herbst is interested in the quotidian changes that occur between repetition, how light falls across surfaces, where shadows lengthen and stretch, how a simple paper object changes through the unfolding events. Though the final works appear still, they hold traces of movement and duration, quietly carrying the memory of action within them. The passage of time, now represented in painterly language, offers a dissonance that Herbst (along with her avid collector base) find infinitely interesting.
Narratives in Herbst’s paintings unfold slowly and often fragmentarily. Details revealing through prolonged looking, a sort of 'delayed discovery' that invites attentiveness and return, almost like what happens upon repeat listening to a song, or returning to a beloved novel time and again, where subtle details and continue to reveal themselves and meaning, a little like the childhood whispering game of telephone, is ever-evasive, alluring, and just a little out of reach.
BEERS London is thrilled to introduce Alice Herbst’s to our audiences, an artist with such a striking voice and ethos is certain to thrill collectors and visitors alike.
