JONATHAN WATERIDGE

Jonathan Wateridge

* 1972 Lusaka, Zambia – lives in London

Jonathan Wateridge grew up in Zambia and at the age of 18 moved to the UK, where in the early 1990s he studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art. In his works, he examines the subliminal impact of photographic and cinematic images from our everyday life.

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He created his first series using his realistic aesthetic in 2005. It is a number of catastrophic images that depict ships and aircraft crash sites in hyperrealistic settings. He then created the “Group Series”, with actors dressed as astronauts or Sandinista rebels in images that bring to mind souvenir photos, and the “Another Place” series in 2007 that transforms Los Angeles into a fictional film set. In his cycles, Wateridge keeps depicting social and aesthetic phenomena. Usually he tests scenes with actors wearing selected costumes and the use of real-life props. He plays generously with light and, in the end, he does not film the scenes but takes photographs, and then paints them later.

Wateridge’s purpose is not to make a photorealistic rendering, as one may suspect given the complex production process, but a painting. His works are created with the impasto technique, or are even partly abstract. These contrast with the detailed parts of the composition. Formal contrasts correspond with the ambivalent presentation of content: reality and fiction, privacy and the public sphere – contrasts that also reflect the social changes which the artist examines and presents in his art

Snyder ist in zahlreichen Museumssammlungen vertreten, darunter The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Jewish Museum, Guggenheim Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago und The Phillips Collection. Im Jahr 2021 erwarb die Tate Modern, London, ihr bahnbrechendes Werk “Dark Strokes Hope” aus den 1970er Jahren.

Zu ihren jüngsten Einzelausstellungen gehören The Summer Becomes a Room in der Canada Gallery, New York City (2020) und Rosebuds & Rivers bei Blain/Southern, London (2019). Zu den bedeutenden Gruppenausstellungen der letzten Zeit gehören Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (2018-fortlaufend); Art After Stonewall: 1969-1989, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, NY, Columbus Museum of Art, OH, Patricia and Philip Frost Museum, FL (2019-20); Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, kuratiert von Achim Hochdörfer, David Joselit, Manuela Ammer und Tonio Kröner, Brandhorst Museum, München und mumok, Wien (2015-16).

Snyder lebt und arbeitet derzeit in Brooklyn und Woodstock, NY.

Selected works

Jonathan Wateridge
Enclave Study No. 6 (Expat)

2015
oil on canvas
45 x 60 cm

Jonathan Wateridge
Enclave Study No. 7 (Wall)

2015
oil on canvas
45 x 60 cm

Jonathan Wateridge
Enclave Study No. 12 (Swimmer)

2015
oil on canvas
50 x 75 cm

Exhibitions

2 November 2017 – 22 January 2018

Jonathan Wateridge

Swimmer

The works of the artist, born in Zambia and trained in the United Kingdom, are extremely complex, in spite of or precisely because of their seemingly simple form at first sight. In their complexity, Wateridge’s paintings resemble those of the Renaissance and the Baroque. Here and there, there is an external framework that suggests a simple content to the viewer, and here and there, there is an “extra” of knowledge, messages and mysteries that must be deciphered. Wateridge’s art is highly contextual.

Excerpt

“One of the key recurring figures in this latest series of work is the inclusion of the figure of an African swimmer. An inversion of the ‘all American’ swimmer encapsulated by Ned Merrill in the 1968 film, he represents for Wateridge the spectre of colonial history that haunts the white denizens in their carefully crafted idyllic and tranquil setting.”

Mark Sanders