Lyndsey Ingram is pleased to present Stephen Chambers: Recent Paintings, the artist’s inaugural exhibition at the gallery. The presentation will focus primarily on two series of oil paintings; the Berlin Flowers and the Obsidian Mirrors.
“I know where ‘flower’ paintings stand in the hierarchy of art’s subject matter; beneath the sole of the boot. With that in mind, these are paintings of empowerment… a wish to add gravitas to the maligned, give individuality to the familiar, and status to the downtrodden” - Stephen Chambers.
Stephen Chambers RA divides his time between London and Berlin, attributing his time in Germany to the pursuit of a life less ordinary. The Berlin Flowers began in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Chambers was living in Berlin. On the first Saturday of each month, he purchased a bunch of seasonal flowers from the weekend market and placed them in different vases, often belonging to the artist’s friends; Edwina’s Vase, Yorck’s Vase Red & Rika’s Japanese Vase, forming the focus of the composition. During the lockdown period florists were deemed an essential service and were allowed to stay open. These paintings became a quiet ritual for Chambers, a visual calendar of the year the world stood still; marking time through blossom and seasonal shift—an understated yet poignant measure of months passed during the worldwide lockdown.
The Obsidian Mirrors focus on the mysterious allure of polished volcanic glass historically used by the Aztecs and figures like John Dee, the Elizabethan astrologer. These mirrors were used in many ways, including for medicinal and protective purposes and for divination, as they were believed to reveal the realms of gods and ancestors. Chambers draws on the supernatural associations with these mirrors to create a frame within a frame; they appear against vividly coloured backgrounds as mysterious floating portals.
Both bodies of work are painted in oil with the colour and compositional clarity that defines Chambers’ wider oeuvre and are extremely complex. Chambers begins by painting the flowers with intense precision, only adding the background once he is satisfied with the vase and various bloom. Though their subject matter is traditional, Chambers uses the concept of the still life as a way of capturing a strange moment in time as well as recording the poignancy of the short lifespan of a vase of flowers. There is as much attention placed on the branches, broken stems and wilting stalks as there is on flowers within the vases. It is a deliberate attempt of the artist to transpose the idea of the still life.
In addition to these paintings, we will have a selection of Chambers’s portraits, including The Outliers, an ongoing project focusing on people of interest to the artist who he is unlikely, or unable, to ever meet. These characters are linked only by their clarity of thought, affirmative voices, and positive contribution to their eras and surroundings.
