Exhibition: THE WHITE HOTEL

THE WHITE HOTEL

Curated by Simon Bayliss & Lucy Stein

10 July - 22 August 2014

Exhibition features two paintings by Lenkiewicz:

The Putrefaction of Diogenes and The Painter with Benedikte
 

CAROLE GIBBONS, NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE, FRANCE-LISE MCGURN NICOLA BEALING,

SHANA MOULTON, DM THOMAS, SCOTTIE WILSON  FOSTER & BEREAN, ABIGAIL REYNOLDS,

SIMON BAYLISS, LUCY STEIN JUDITH BERNSTEIN, ROBERT LENKIEWICZ, MICHELLE USSHER 

DAVID INSHAW, ALAN DAVIE, HUMBERTO POBLETE-BUSTAMANTE SUSAN HILLER,

MANUELA GERNEDEL, NATALYA GONCHAROVA

On a hungover morning in Plymouth, painters (and friends) Lucy Stein and Simon Bayliss stumbled across a paperback copy of The White Hotel, resting on a street wall. It was the day after the opening of SS Blue Jacket, their inaugural exhibition as curatorial partners, and this literary encounter signified a serendipitous moment. With the book retrieved, and when invited to curate the Gimpel Fils summer show, it was clear from
where the project should arise.

The novel, by D M Thomas, begins with a long poem written for the purpose of psychoanalysis, by a female patient of a fictionalised Sigmund Freud. In this text she imagines a wildly erotic affair with the professor's son, at a white hotel by a lake. Yet while the newly met couple indulge in incessant carnal pleasures, a series of catastrophes, including a fire and a flood, kill almost every other guest at the resort. The narrative is
surreal, inscribed as a streaming hallucination, yet it imparts visceral suggestions of raw nature, freak weather, celestial events, and a magnificent surrounding countryside.

The exhibition draws on Gimpel Fils' legacy of exhibiting both modernist and contemporary artists. It includes pieces from the gallery collection, as well as work by invited artists. Through the prism of painting a poetic response to the themes of the book unfolds.