Maddox Arts is delighted to announce the latest solo exhibition of work by British sculptor Julian Wild. Fear of Geometry is emblematic of the transgressions made in British sculpture since Herbert Read first coined ‘the geometry of fear’ to describe the preoccupations of a new generations of British sculptors in the aftermath of the Second World War. That generation of sculptors; including Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick and Bernard Meadows found the rendering of industrial metals instead of the stone and wood of their predecessors necessary in describing the paranoia of a new atomic age and the artist’s uncertain role within it.
Conversely, in 2012 we find Julian Wild’s sculpture seeking to describe a paranoia emanating directly from the artist’s own apprehension toward the supposed virtues of linearity. In Deadly Nightshade we witness this uneasiness in a complex web of organic forms; deriving from a singular orientation, parallel limbs threaten to converge but resist, each obeying its own tropic pull. A spectrum of phosphorescent colour flows along the object’s outgrowth, an amorphous rash indicative of its restless mutations.
In Right Angled Ragwort (another title derived from plant nomenclature) we see the perfect symmetry of a right angle augmented by a serpentine contortion at its juncture. Through this entanglement we can glimpse the piece’s verisimilitude and in its geometry’s resolution we can understand the deterministic unwavering of organic growth.
The artist has suggested that it is the physical praxis of working with malleable metals that lend these works their spontaneity; mutations evolve through their own serendipity, with each appendage the form’s eventual outcome is reconsidered and from each aperture new forms are suggested.
Julian Wild graduated from Kingston University in 1995 with a BA in sculpture. In 2005 he won The Millfield Sculpture Prize and was shortlisted in the same year for The Jerwood Sculpture Prize. From 2009-2012 Wild was awarded The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea & Chelsea Arts club Trust studio Bursary. The award has given him a purpose built sculpture studio in Chelsea for 3 years, with a resultant solo show at Leighton House Museum in 2013. Wild’s work has been commissioned by private collectors and public institutions including The Cass Sculpture Foundation, The Jerwood Sculpture Park, Crest Nicholson, Schroders, Fidelity Investments and Wyeth Europa.. The artist recently exhibited a series of sculptures at Burghley House, Lincolnshire. Fear of Geometry coincides with Wild’s exhibition of outdoor sculptures in Bishops Square, Spitalfields and a solo project at Modern Art Oxford opening in December.
Pictured: Right Angled Ragwort, polished and powder-coated stainless steel.
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