Timothy Taylor Gallery

Gibbs’ interest in travel imagery began 15 years ago when he started making drawings based on photographs found in holiday brochures. Early series included the ‘Typical Interiors’ of Mediterranean villas and the facades of city hotels. Since 2000, Gibbs has predominantly used his own photographs from which to work.

Fascinated by the familiarity that draws the viewer into a recognisable subject, be it a view of New York, London or Paris, Gibbs photographs the ‘ready-made’ scenes that all tourists cross off their lists. The resultant works, stripped of colour, detail and photographic clarity, leave an impression of a still recognisable scene made up of row upon row of hand drawn slash marks hung on the scaffold of an invisible grid scored into the paper. Gibbs’ drawings present this familiarity in a reductively minimalist way while simultaneously retaining a sense of the artist’s careful hand.

With a photograph one expects to see greater detail upon closer inspection, yet the illusion created in Gibbs’ drawings dissolves the closer one gets, in turn revealing the intricate detail of the mark making. This repetition and all over nature of the marks deny an easy resting place for the eye and it is only when standing back from the work that one can attempt to arrest and understand the image.

Born in 1973, Gibbs graduated from Goldsmiths College of Art in 1996. He has exhibited internationally and in 2010 he was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to make a series of drawings based on the city which were exhibited as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations. Gibbs was chosen as the artist to represent the Armory show in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include Ewan Gibbs: America, Davidson College of Arts, North Carolina (2010); Chicago, Richard Grey Gallery, Chicago (2011); Ewan Gibbs, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2008); _Pictures of Pitchers, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, Texas (2008) and New York, Paul Morris Gallery, New York (2007). Group exhibitions have included Drawn from Photography (curated by Claire Gilman), The Drawing Center, New York (2011); Making a Mark: Drawings from the Contemporary Collection, High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2011); Attention to Detail (curated by Chuck Close), TheFLAG Art Foundation, New York (2008); Agnes Martin, Vija Celmins and Ewan Gibbs, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2006); Originality and Repetition: the Grid in Contemporary Works on Paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (2005) and Surfacing, Contemporary Drawing, the ICA, London (1998). Public collections include Tate Gallery, London; MoMA, New York; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. Gibbs currently lives and works in Oxfordshire, UK.

Download full biography (0kb)

View editions by Ewan Gibbs

View publications by Ewan Gibbs

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•