Fractured Integrity

Rowan Newton

Jealous East

04 Apr 2019 — 14 Apr 2019

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Rowan Newton’s highly anticipated and long-overdue debut UK Solo Exhibition ‘Fractured Integrity’ runs at Jealous East.

For an exclusive 10 day launch, featuring 6 large-scale paintings and a series of miniature studies, marking a new direction in the artists work and a renewed, unique reflection on figurative painting. Figures are poised in almost cinematic realities, instigating a sense of familiarity, yet these worlds are disrupted with sharp glitches and gestural sweeps of colour; a disrupted reality which isn’t quite as familiar as it first seemed. Motion swirls around the carefully constructed figures as they move through the canvas, expressed through the artists loose, confident and textural application of the medium and liberal use of vibrant colours which surrounds and interacts with them.

‘Fractured Integrity’ explores an emotive narrative, told through the female form with a series of frozen moments exploring the psychological darkness which accompanies our human need to connect; insecurity, power, isolation and vulnerability. Identity is subverted by the concealment or obscuring of the face, drawing our focus directly to the body.

The gaze of the voyeur, however, is irrelevant. These characters recoil and turn away from our stares, an ambivalent nonchalance to our presence is created. Though beautiful and elegant, they make no attempt to seduce us with their naked forms. As we move past the beauty of colour, we are left with subtle suggestions of darkness, pain and anxiety, moments which create for the viewer a context to reflect on their own unique experiences.

“I want the viewer to look at something that they have seen a thousand times before, but experience it completely differently”

Rowan Newton

UK Based Artist

Rowan Newton is a British painter, whose focus explores the complexity of human emotion through body language and expressive paint application. With single character compositions, Rowans figures are as complex emotionally, as they are physically contrasting. Bold and vivid, colours combine through scrapes and sweeps as he drags his mixed mediums of oil and spray paint over the canvas. The uplifting dynamism owned by the paint collides with the unassuming composition of his forms; a darker edge emerges...

“I want the viewer to look at something that they have seen a thousand times before, but experience it completely differently”

Growing up in Brixton, Rowan developed an early fascination with an urban landscape constructed of graffiti and billboard advertisements. These gritty layers and textures continue to influence his work in the studio as he tirelessly works to blend them in new and conflicting ways.

Rowan’s work has been in various exhibitions and art fairs in the UK and further afield including the The Original Print Fair at The Royal Academy, Stroke Art Fair, Affordable Art Fairs internationally and the London Art Fair, as well as having his work auctioned at the House of Commons in 2014. His work has also shown internationally, from New York to Amsterdam to Shanghai. He has been featured on respected websites such as Empty Kingdom, Maestro Knows, and Zeutch; and his work has graced the cover of Diplomat Magazine and the pages of the Great Big Book of Fashion Illustration.