JONATHAN KELLY
Truths and Rights
March 2022
Cromwell Place, London
We are delighted to present Truths and Rights, the first solo exhibition by British artist Jonathan Kelly (b. 1988).
A painter of marked individuality, Kelly employs a pictorial vocabulary that is simultaneously rich and reductive, self-referential and all-encompassing.
Through luminous colour, texture and the use of paired down recognisable symbols he explores - and questions - structures of shared human experience, consciousness and belief.
Kelly’s images feel discovered rather than painted; they emerge from multiple layers of colour whose order appears indistinguishable, as if the paint has suddenly illuminated and awakened timeless forms that lay beneath.
Iterations of motifs in confident, decisive lines function as mantras or anchors in a search for some pure essential truth, a quest that is as universal as it is deeply nuanced and personal.
4 Cromwell Place, London SW7 2JE
Opening Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 10am - 6 pm; Sunday 10 am - 4 pm.
Tuesday by appointment only, please email info@ioneandmann.com for availability.
With roots in minimalism and modernity, Jonathan Kelly’s approach to painting is driven by the notion of the absolute, the reduced, pure, essential form. Somewhat paradoxically, Kelly also draws on religious and prehistoric art, spirituality and mysticism, as well as on the field of natural sciences, reconciling seemingly conflicting viewpoints under the prism of the human condition.
Whilst science seeks a list of ingredients, an instruction manual for the building blocks of the universe, humankind seeks its own fundamentals; love, happiness, protection, abundance, freedom from suffering. Much like equations that aim to reduce complex calculations into “one-liners”, Kelly uses a vocabulary of symbols as a personal iconography to express the rituals and beliefs that form the fundamentals of the human experience.
From spiral motifs referencing natural geometry, magnetic vibrational states of subatomic particles, states of consciousness and the generative force of the universe, to figurative elements emerging as timeless, archetypal forms, Kelly’s imagery feels like a discovered message, a reassuring promise.
Through symmetry and repetition, patterns, figures and gestures become visual meditative aides, alternating between meaningful and meaningless connecting the physical world to pure consciousness; a personal navigation system in hope of unearthing an ever present truth.
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About
Jonathan Kelly (b. 1988, Hereford, UK) is a British painter living and working in London.
Kelly’s bold and often multilayered paintings employ paired down recognisable elemental motifs and figures that reference our very early ancestors, the fundamentals of the human condition and the perennial search for an essential truth.
Truths and Rights is his first solo exhibition and his fifth show with the gallery.
He is a graduate of the Royal Academy Schools (2017) and Wimbledon College of Art (2011).
Images: Exhibition Photography by Matt Spour; Spira (Silver), 2022 [detail] © Jonathan Kelly | Courtesy the artist and Ione & Mann