Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray

Curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto

Eduardo Secci

Milan, from April 1 to June 3, 2022 (extended)

Opening: Friday, April 1, 4:00 - 9:00 pm

Special opening hours: Saturday, April 2, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm

Exhibition view, Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray, 2022, Eduardo Secci Milano, Photo The Knack Studio, Courtesy the artists and Eduardo Secci, Florence, Milan

Eduardo Secci is pleased to present the two-person show “Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray”, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, in the gallery spaces in Milan, from April 1 to June 3, 2022. The exhibition opens at the same time as the art fair miart(from April 1 to 3, 2022), in which Eduardo Secci participates, dedicating the booth to the two artists.

Daniel Crews-Chubb's poetics originates from the repetition of figurative motifs that become an investigation instrument of the same painting act. His subjects - widely inspired by representations of different cultures belonging to various eras - are characterized by the enveloping poses and can allude to several references, ranging from ancient sculptures of deities to the action figures with which he played as a child up to expressions of the contemporary. The artist intervenes for numerous layers on rough canvases, scratching and using oil, acrylic, spray paint, sand, charcoal, and pastel. The surface, defined by a long stratification process, is important to him as the depicted image.

In exploring the human figure, Kevin Francis Gray instead focuses on the tactile dimension of marble, trigging a sense of delicacy into the ability to shape it, which reveals the will to elicit intimate reflections. Sculpting veiled limbs and faces with emphasized features, he acts in a liminal space between abstraction and figuration, movement and stasis. His vast imagination draws on personal cultural heritage, combined with literary and philosophical references.

The occasion creates a dialogue between paintings by Daniel Crews-Chubb and sculptures by Kevin Francis Gray with a common visual vocabulary that combines the figurative and the abstract. The works by the English painter and Irish sculptor dissect the matter through different techniques, stimulating intense psychological introspections. The observer is thus encouraged to contemplate them intensely and immerse themselves in their volumes, hollows, and details, abandoning themselves to a whirlwind path of myths, appearances reveling themselves and then disappearing, colors, and elaborate textures.

The exhibition walkthrough video will be online at: www.eduardosecci.com/exhibitions.

A similar attitude

Daniel Crews-Chubb & Kevin Francis Gray

Curatorial text by Pier Paolo Pancotto

Kevin Francis Gray, (Armagh, 1972) is a sculptor who studied at the National College Of Art and Design in Dublin (1995), the School of Art Institute in Chicago (1996), and Goldsmiths University in London (1999). He lives and works between London, England and Pietrasanta, Italy. Daniel Crews-Chubb (Northampton, 1984) is a painter who studied at Chelsea College of Arts (2009) and Turps Art School (2013) in London, England. He lives and works in London.

The two artists are diverse in all aspects including realms of individuality, professional background, anagraphic, cultural, and social. However, a similar attitude unites them and puts them, surprisingly, in dialogue. It is the common tendency to turn their chosen language - painting for the former, sculpture for the latter - towards alternative spheres to those of origin and to turn it into the domain of the opposite one. That is to say: the former, with his sculptures, achieves pictorial results; the latter, with his paintings, plastic ones, both from a technical and semantic point of view. This continuous trespassing is the leitmotiv of their researches, placing them virtually in the same operative dimension, even if in the marked linguistic and technical heterogeneity that distinguishes their basic structure.

The exhibition in Milan focuses its attention on these elective affinities and highlights them through some works that, arranged together as if to compose a single, large installation, testify to the iconographic, iconological and methodological divergences and convergences that fuel the dialogue between the two artists.

For the occasion, Kevin Francis Gray offers marble sculptures from 2021-22 and some bronzes from 2017; Daniel Crews-Chubb a series of paintings from 2022. Both authors adopt a syntax that constantly slips between figuration and abstraction and that takes its cue from the reality (whether represented by an individual or by an animal or vegetable entity) to reflect, more generally, on the role that painting and sculpture can have today, reconsidering their function and boundaries, characteristics and aims in the context of contemporary creativity. This is a procedure where linguistic investigation almost always prevails over the representation of the subject, sometimes reduced to a mere pretext for the creative act, which has always been central to the work of the two artists. The repetition of images, often similar to each other and lacking a specific identification code, constitutes, in fact, a vehicle through which to conduct their exploration of artistic disciplines and the meaning that the very act of painting and sculpting can assume today, both on an ethical and intellectual level.

In the course of these investigations, Kevin Francis Gray exalts above all the tactile dimension of marble, shaping it with a soft progression, made of fluid passages and veils that induce him to ideally trespass into the territory of painting, in particular, the tonal one where every color is declined in all its possible chromatic gradations. In the same way, it is as if he were shading the surface of stone (but also of bronze or other metal alloys) giving rise to minimal variations, sometimes millimetric, of the material, both in relief and in recess.

Daniel Crews-Chubb, on the other hand, sublimates the material component of his colors - oil, acrylic, spray, sand, charcoal, pastel - applying them in layers on the canvas and letting them emerge on the surface with a strong, sometimes brutal, evidence, thus echoing atmospheres close to those of Expressionism, especially in the guise of Die Brücke, or Art Brut. In this way, he reaches an almost plastic dimension and, moving between superimposed planes and three-dimensional extensions, he emblematically offers his own, original reinterpretation of sculpture making.

To unite the two artists and further articulate their dialogue, there is also the special bond that each of them has established and continues to cultivate with Italian history and culture, matured in the course of repeated experiences in the territory, both individual and professional. A bond that emerges above all in the singular ability to deal with traditional artistic techniques as well as with the visual imagery and semantic classic, while remaining firmly witnesses of their time.

Pier Paolo Pancotto is curator of the Art Club exhibition program of Villa Medici - French Academy in Rome.

Daniel Crews-Chubb (1984, Northampton, England) lives and works in London. He studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design (2009) and the Turps Art School (Painters Studio Program, 2013). The artist’s works have been presented in museums and galleries, such as Timothy Taylor Gallery (London, New York), Roberts Projects (Los Angeles), Choi & Lager Gallery (Seoul), Powerlong Museum (Shanghai), Hastings Contemporary (Hastings). In 2021, the English Heritage commissioned him the solo show The Consequences of Play at the Wellington Arch in London. In 2023, he will exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. His works are included in prestigious collections: Denver Art Museum, The Long Museum (Shanghai), and the Hall Art Foundation (New York), among others.

Kevin Francis Gray (1972, Armagh, Northern Ireland) lives and works between London and Pietrasanta, Italy. The artist deals with the complex relationships between abstraction, figuration, and portrait through sculpture. His research investigates the line between contemporary society and ancient times, reverberating aesthetics of neoclassicism. He studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin (1995) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1996) before the MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London (1999). His works have been exhibited in the United Kingdom at the Royal Academy (London) and Sudeley Castle (Winchcombe, Gloucestershire), in Ireland at the Crawford Art Center (Cork), Dublin Castle (Dublin), and Castletown House (Celbridge), in Italy at the Stefano Bardini Museum (Florence) and Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (Naples), in France at the MAC VAL - Musée d'Art contemporain du Val-de-Marne (Paris), Musée d'art moderne de Saint-Étienne métropole ( Saint-Priest-en-Jarez), and Villa Santo Sospir (Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat), in the Netherlands at the Nieuw Dakota (Amsterdam), in Spain at the Artium, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo (Vitoria-Gasteiz), in Israel at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Tel Aviv), and Canada at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec).

Eduardo Secci is an Italian gallery founded in 2013 in Florence with a second location in Milan from June 2021. Both spaces present a double program featuring the exhibitions of the main gallery and NOVO, its new independent experimental space.

During miart at Eduardo Secci Milano, the opening reception of the two-person show “Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray” takes place on Friday, April 1 (4:00 - 9:00 pm) and a special opening on Saturday, April 2 (10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm).

In addition, the gallery booth at the art fair miart in Milan, from April 1 to 3, 2022, is dedicated to the two artists.

Kevin Francis Gray, detail, Ceridwen Rising, 2022, Carrara marble on steel base, overall 173 x 96 x 86 cm (68.1 x 37.7 x 33.8 in), sculpture 80 x 86.5 x 76.5 cm (31.4 x 34 x 30.1 in), sculpture base height 10 cm (3.9 in), Photo The Knack Studio, Courtesy Kevin Francis Gray Studio and Eduardo Secci, Florence, Milan

Eduardo Secci Milano (Via Zenale)

Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto

From April 1 to June 3, 2022 (extended)

Opening: Friday, April 1, 4:00 - 9:00 pm

Via Zenale 3, Milan, Italy / +39 02 38248728 / milano@eduardosecci.com

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm

Eduardo Secci Milano (Via Olmetto) NEW VENUE

Unmatter - Joshua Hagler, Luisa Rabbia, Maja Ruznic, curated by Alberto Fiz

From April 28 to August 5, 2022

NOVO Milano (Via Olmetto) NEW VENUE

Tillman Kaiser, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto

From April 28 to August 5, 2022

Opening: Thursday, April 28, 6:00 - 9:00 pm

Via Olmetto 1, Milan, Italy / milano@eduardosecci.com

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm

Eduardo Secci Firenze

a question of vibrancy/earthly sight - Natalie Ball, Khari Johnson-Ricks, Maria Maea, Azikiwe Mohammed, Devin N. Morris, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, Elise Peterson, Adee Roberson, Khalif Tahir Thompson, curated by Essence Harden

From March 25 to May 21, 2022

Piazza Goldoni 2, Florence, Italy / +39 055 661356 / firenze@eduardosecci.com

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm

Easter Holiday: closed from Friday April 15 to Monday 18, 2022

www.eduardosecci.com / gallery@eduardosecci.com / IG @eduardoseccigallery / FB @eduardoseccicontemporary

www.novo.ooo / hello@novo.ooo / IG @novo_projects / FB @NOVOprojects

Exhibition walkthroughs videos with artists and curators: www.eduardosecci.com/exhibitions - www.novo.ooo/exhibitions

Press Office: THE KNACK STUDIO / Tamara Lorenzi

tamara@theknackstudio.com / +39 347 0712934

info@theknackstudio.com / www.theknackstudio.com

Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray

Curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto

Eduardo Secci

Milan, from April 1 to June 3, 2022 (extended)

Opening: Friday, April 1, 4:00 - 9:00 pm

Special opening hours: Saturday, April 2, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm

Exhibition view, Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray, 2022, Eduardo Secci Milano, Photo The Knack Studio, Courtesy the artists and Eduardo Secci, Florence, Milan

Eduardo Secci is pleased to present the two-person show “Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray”, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, in the gallery spaces in Milan, from April 1 to June 3, 2022. The exhibition opens at the same time as the art fair miart(from April 1 to 3, 2022), in which Eduardo Secci participates, dedicating the booth to the two artists.

Daniel Crews-Chubb's poetics originates from the repetition of figurative motifs that become an investigation instrument of the same painting act. His subjects - widely inspired by representations of different cultures belonging to various eras - are characterized by the enveloping poses and can allude to several references, ranging from ancient sculptures of deities to the action figures with which he played as a child up to expressions of the contemporary. The artist intervenes for numerous layers on rough canvases, scratching and using oil, acrylic, spray paint, sand, charcoal, and pastel. The surface, defined by a long stratification process, is important to him as the depicted image.

In exploring the human figure, Kevin Francis Gray instead focuses on the tactile dimension of marble, trigging a sense of delicacy into the ability to shape it, which reveals the will to elicit intimate reflections. Sculpting veiled limbs and faces with emphasized features, he acts in a liminal space between abstraction and figuration, movement and stasis. His vast imagination draws on personal cultural heritage, combined with literary and philosophical references.

The occasion creates a dialogue between paintings by Daniel Crews-Chubb and sculptures by Kevin Francis Gray with a common visual vocabulary that combines the figurative and the abstract. The works by the English painter and Irish sculptor dissect the matter through different techniques, stimulating intense psychological introspections. The observer is thus encouraged to contemplate them intensely and immerse themselves in their volumes, hollows, and details, abandoning themselves to a whirlwind path of myths, appearances reveling themselves and then disappearing, colors, and elaborate textures.

The exhibition walkthrough video will be online at: www.eduardosecci.com/exhibitions.

A similar attitude

Daniel Crews-Chubb & Kevin Francis Gray

Curatorial text by Pier Paolo Pancotto

Kevin Francis Gray, (Armagh, 1972) is a sculptor who studied at the National College Of Art and Design in Dublin (1995), the School of Art Institute in Chicago (1996), and Goldsmiths University in London (1999). He lives and works between London, England and Pietrasanta, Italy. Daniel Crews-Chubb (Northampton, 1984) is a painter who studied at Chelsea College of Arts (2009) and Turps Art School (2013) in London, England. He lives and works in London.

The two artists are diverse in all aspects including realms of individuality, professional background, anagraphic, cultural, and social. However, a similar attitude unites them and puts them, surprisingly, in dialogue. It is the common tendency to turn their chosen language - painting for the former, sculpture for the latter - towards alternative spheres to those of origin and to turn it into the domain of the opposite one. That is to say: the former, with his sculptures, achieves pictorial results; the latter, with his paintings, plastic ones, both from a technical and semantic point of view. This continuous trespassing is the leitmotiv of their researches, placing them virtually in the same operative dimension, even if in the marked linguistic and technical heterogeneity that distinguishes their basic structure.

The exhibition in Milan focuses its attention on these elective affinities and highlights them through some works that, arranged together as if to compose a single, large installation, testify to the iconographic, iconological and methodological divergences and convergences that fuel the dialogue between the two artists.

For the occasion, Kevin Francis Gray offers marble sculptures from 2021-22 and some bronzes from 2017; Daniel Crews-Chubb a series of paintings from 2022. Both authors adopt a syntax that constantly slips between figuration and abstraction and that takes its cue from the reality (whether represented by an individual or by an animal or vegetable entity) to reflect, more generally, on the role that painting and sculpture can have today, reconsidering their function and boundaries, characteristics and aims in the context of contemporary creativity. This is a procedure where linguistic investigation almost always prevails over the representation of the subject, sometimes reduced to a mere pretext for the creative act, which has always been central to the work of the two artists. The repetition of images, often similar to each other and lacking a specific identification code, constitutes, in fact, a vehicle through which to conduct their exploration of artistic disciplines and the meaning that the very act of painting and sculpting can assume today, both on an ethical and intellectual level.

In the course of these investigations, Kevin Francis Gray exalts above all the tactile dimension of marble, shaping it with a soft progression, made of fluid passages and veils that induce him to ideally trespass into the territory of painting, in particular, the tonal one where every color is declined in all its possible chromatic gradations. In the same way, it is as if he were shading the surface of stone (but also of bronze or other metal alloys) giving rise to minimal variations, sometimes millimetric, of the material, both in relief and in recess.

Daniel Crews-Chubb, on the other hand, sublimates the material component of his colors - oil, acrylic, spray, sand, charcoal, pastel - applying them in layers on the canvas and letting them emerge on the surface with a strong, sometimes brutal, evidence, thus echoing atmospheres close to those of Expressionism, especially in the guise of Die Brücke, or Art Brut. In this way, he reaches an almost plastic dimension and, moving between superimposed planes and three-dimensional extensions, he emblematically offers his own, original reinterpretation of sculpture making.

To unite the two artists and further articulate their dialogue, there is also the special bond that each of them has established and continues to cultivate with Italian history and culture, matured in the course of repeated experiences in the territory, both individual and professional. A bond that emerges above all in the singular ability to deal with traditional artistic techniques as well as with the visual imagery and semantic classic, while remaining firmly witnesses of their time.

Pier Paolo Pancotto is curator of the Art Club exhibition program of Villa Medici - French Academy in Rome.

Daniel Crews-Chubb (1984, Northampton, England) lives and works in London. He studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design (2009) and the Turps Art School (Painters Studio Program, 2013). The artist’s works have been presented in museums and galleries, such as Timothy Taylor Gallery (London, New York), Roberts Projects (Los Angeles), Choi & Lager Gallery (Seoul), Powerlong Museum (Shanghai), Hastings Contemporary (Hastings). In 2021, the English Heritage commissioned him the solo show The Consequences of Play at the Wellington Arch in London. In 2023, he will exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. His works are included in prestigious collections: Denver Art Museum, The Long Museum (Shanghai), and the Hall Art Foundation (New York), among others.

Kevin Francis Gray (1972, Armagh, Northern Ireland) lives and works between London and Pietrasanta, Italy. The artist deals with the complex relationships between abstraction, figuration, and portrait through sculpture. His research investigates the line between contemporary society and ancient times, reverberating aesthetics of neoclassicism. He studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin (1995) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1996) before the MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London (1999). His works have been exhibited in the United Kingdom at the Royal Academy (London) and Sudeley Castle (Winchcombe, Gloucestershire), in Ireland at the Crawford Art Center (Cork), Dublin Castle (Dublin), and Castletown House (Celbridge), in Italy at the Stefano Bardini Museum (Florence) and Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (Naples), in France at the MAC VAL - Musée d'Art contemporain du Val-de-Marne (Paris), Musée d'art moderne de Saint-Étienne métropole ( Saint-Priest-en-Jarez), and Villa Santo Sospir (Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat), in the Netherlands at the Nieuw Dakota (Amsterdam), in Spain at the Artium, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo (Vitoria-Gasteiz), in Israel at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Tel Aviv), and Canada at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec).

Eduardo Secci is an Italian gallery founded in 2013 in Florence with a second location in Milan from June 2021. Both spaces present a double program featuring the exhibitions of the main gallery and NOVO, its new independent experimental space.

During miart at Eduardo Secci Milano, the opening reception of the two-person show “Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray” takes place on Friday, April 1 (4:00 - 9:00 pm) and a special opening on Saturday, April 2 (10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm).

In addition, the gallery booth at the art fair miart in Milan, from April 1 to 3, 2022, is dedicated to the two artists.

Kevin Francis Gray, detail, Ceridwen Rising, 2022, Carrara marble on steel base, overall 173 x 96 x 86 cm (68.1 x 37.7 x 33.8 in), sculpture 80 x 86.5 x 76.5 cm (31.4 x 34 x 30.1 in), sculpture base height 10 cm (3.9 in), Photo The Knack Studio, Courtesy Kevin Francis Gray Studio and Eduardo Secci, Florence, Milan

Eduardo Secci Milano (Via Zenale)

Daniel Crews-Chubb and Kevin Francis Gray, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto

From April 1 to June 3, 2022 (extended)

Opening: Friday, April 1, 4:00 - 9:00 pm

Via Zenale 3, Milan, Italy / +39 02 38248728 / milano@eduardosecci.com

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm

Eduardo Secci Milano (Via Olmetto) NEW VENUE

Unmatter - Joshua Hagler, Luisa Rabbia, Maja Ruznic, curated by Alberto Fiz

From April 28 to August 5, 2022

NOVO Milano (Via Olmetto) NEW VENUE

Tillman Kaiser, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto

From April 28 to August 5, 2022

Opening: Thursday, April 28, 6:00 - 9:00 pm

Via Olmetto 1, Milan, Italy / milano@eduardosecci.com

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm

Eduardo Secci Firenze

a question of vibrancy/earthly sight - Natalie Ball, Khari Johnson-Ricks, Maria Maea, Azikiwe Mohammed, Devin N. Morris, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, Elise Peterson, Adee Roberson, Khalif Tahir Thompson, curated by Essence Harden

From March 25 to May 21, 2022

Piazza Goldoni 2, Florence, Italy / +39 055 661356 / firenze@eduardosecci.com

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm

Easter Holiday: closed from Friday April 15 to Monday 18, 2022

www.eduardosecci.com / gallery@eduardosecci.com / IG @eduardoseccigallery / FB @eduardoseccicontemporary

www.novo.ooo / hello@novo.ooo / IG @novo_projects / FB @NOVOprojects

Exhibition walkthroughs videos with artists and curators: www.eduardosecci.com/exhibitions - www.novo.ooo/exhibitions

Press Office: THE KNACK STUDIO / Tamara Lorenzi

tamara@theknackstudio.com / +39 347 0712934

info@theknackstudio.com / www.theknackstudio.com