Andrew Litten | Fragile Together

Along with 1000 artists across the UK last year, Andrew Litten responded to an open call from JD Malat one of Mayfair's most prestigious galleries for a lockdown exhibition. Litten's work bedazzled the high-profile panel of judges who included celebrated auctioneer and dealer Simon de Pury, art historian David Bellingham (Sotheby's Institute of Art) YBA artist Gavin Turk and Dylan Jones the editor of GQ magazine. He was offered an exhibition right away. As well as impressing art world insiders, Litten's work strikes a chord with the general public. We have all experienced the gamut of human emotion during the pandemic and connect to the raw and visceral states of being that he portrays.

Entitled 'Fragile Together', the exhibition brings together Litten’s recent large-scale figurative paintings, sculptures, and mixed media works on paper, presenting a multi-faceted body of work that reflects our shared human vulnerability. Author, critic, and curator Anna McNay described Litten’s work in Studio International as “unsettling images, frequently depicting liminal states, or a vortex of raw emotions, set in a nightmarish realm of distorted technicolour.”

Andrew Litten cites the poetry of Louise Bourgeois as one of the key influences behind Fragile Together and discusses his thinking behind it: “The work itself is intended to be unguarded, full of raw nerves and emotionally varied.” He says. “I look to create art that speaks of the love, anger, loss, personal growth, and the private confusions we all experience in our lives. Where our vulnerability is made apparent, there is then a potential to relate to others. I want this exhibition to nurture a life-affirming sense of our shared humanity and encourage wider readings of compassion. Empathy is powerful.”

'Fragile Together' aims to express complex states of our contemporary condition and convey shared anxieties of our troubled times such as parenting in the pandemic, alcohol or drug dependency, grief, and mental health issues. Litten is inspired by the commonplace, stimulated by the many objects in his studio, and by the activity of art-making, assembling, collaging, scoring texture into surfaces, and manipulating the material qualities of paint.

The varied expressive handling of materials and the wide-ranging subjects denote the artist’s requirement for emotive articulacy. This body of work conveys potential human alienation and neurosis, whilst also reflecting our complicated co-existence. Through intensity, disturbance, and agitation, the works in this exhibition aim to encourage readings of compassion. Litten hopes to contribute to the dialogue of developing a kinder society. He says “Through these works, I seek to create stories of authenticity and to explore the part of us that wants to care - to compress a sense of endurance of human spirit.”

JD Malat Gallery welcomes visitors and is open Monday - Friday, 10am - 6pm. Saturday, 12noon - 6pm.

Others Details

URLs: Exhibitor: https://go.evvnt.com/779944-2?pid=6581 Instagram: https://go.evvnt.com/779944-3?pid=6581 Brochure: https://go.evvnt.com/779944-4?pid=6581 Artist / Speaker: Andrew Litten Time: 10:00 am to 6:00 pm