Christopher Orr / The Beguiled Eye

'The Beguiled Eye' at the University of Edinburghʼs Talbot Rice Gallery is Christopher Orrʼs first solo show in Scotland, bringing together new and recent paintings and featuring, for the first time, the artistʼs remarkable sketchbooks.

Orrʼs oil paintings and watercolours offer enigmatic glimpses into other worlds where modern characters appear within expansive environments, laden with drama. The intriguing scenes derive from an appropriation of images from a vast range of visual materials, including National Geographic magazines, scientific manuals, 1950s snaps, art historical images and Super 8 films.

Painting allows the artist to meld these diverse elements into coherent vignettes; people and objects encountering one another in what appear to be significant moments within larger schemes. In some of the scenes, characters parade in 1950s leisure wear into ethereal landscapes, lit by the heavenly skies of romantic painting, or equally, encroached upon by the dark gloaming of science fiction. In others, figures are beholden to strange geometric forms in the sky or stare at scientific models. Many evoke a sense of communion with the sublime, the otherworldly, the strange and the peculiar, while the human characters often remain impassive. 'Silent One' (2010), for example, a couple in holiday dress stare into a dark rocky crevice from which emerges a pale, sombre, floating head. The couple are turned away so we cannot see their expressions, but their body language suggests calm acceptance of this strange spectre.

Orrʼs use of delicate photorealistic characters against more expressive backdrops, borrowing from a vocabulary of Old Masterʼs works, establishes one of the many dialogues within the paintings; meeting points between description and suggestion, the visible and invisible. Changes in scale and the remains of partially erased elements – evidence of the working process – add to the uncanny quality of the works, which nevertheless retain the logical coherence of memory, magic or symbolism. 'All in a moment through the gloom were seen' (2014) depicts three figures looking ahead through luminous shadows: large ghostly figures, creeping across a dimly lit cavern. As with many of the works the true reality of the scene is not disclosed and remains a mystery. Is this a projection – platonic shadows cast across the wall of the cave? Are they prophetic visions? Or are they wraith like forms indicative of fantasy fiction? The viewer is left to decide.

Orrʼs sketchbooks, which have ever before been exhibited, open out the artistʼs methods, offering tantalising glimpses of early tests, unfinished works and a mine of ideas for future work.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a new monograph published by JRP Ringier covering a broader range of Orrʼs paintings and collages, an interview between Pat Fisher, Principal Curator of Talbot Rice Gallery, and the artist; with additional texts by Max Hollein, Director of the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt, and the artist Colin R. Martin.

Biography:

Christopher Orr was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, 1967.

He studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee (1996–2000) and the Royal College of London (2001–2003). His work has appeared in major international solo and group exhibitions including: Kunsthaus Baselland, Light Shining Darkly, Basel, Switzerland (2013); Galleria Il Capricorno, The Haunted Ebb, Venice, (2013); IBID Projects, ʻCleiking the Deilʼ, London, (2012); Hauser & Wirth Zürich (2010) and Nyehaus, New York (2008)

Christopher Orr lives and works in London.

Talbot Rice Gallery would like to thank Hauser & Wirth for their generous support of the project.