Craigie Horsfield

The exhibition is a precise selection of works, each of them a unique photographic print, which extends and concludes the series of work which Horsfield has shown since 1988 – most recently at the ICA in London, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Musee d’Art Moderne de St Etienne and the Kunsthalle, Zurich. His work will also be shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in November 1992.

Collectively, Horsfield’s work is informed by a European debate around the individual and the community; it is concerned with the weight and history of European culture as embodied in the physical world. These new works reflect his continuing interest in the historical present, when the orthodoxies of the century, both political and cultural, have irrevocably fragmented.

Horsfield’s subjects – portraits, figure studies, street scenes -are carefully chosen – all are singular portrayals of discrete experiences which attempt to create an intensity of existence and of being. While his works have a monumental presence, they are imbued with a vulnerability and pervasive sense of mortality, reflecting his view of the present as a moment suffused with doubt. The illusion of progress has crumbled, and the relation of thought and deed is renegotiated.