Daniel Crews-Chubb: Out of Chaos

Timothy Taylor is pleased to present Out of Chaos, an exhibition of new paintings by Daniel Crews-Chubb. The artist's third presentation with the gallery will feature large and medium-scale paintings as well as works on paper. Featuring riotous accumulations of urgent marks and a vivid atmosphere, the works in the exhibition explore the ways in which composition emerges from disorder, centering on the figure as a motif.

The exhibition's title, Out of Chaos—which is shared by a series of paintings on view—is drawn from the ancient Greek mythological notion that chaos is a state of undifferentiated matter from which the universe emerged. Crews-Chubb's paintings are driven by the idea that infinity is a loop between chaos and order, and that energy is not destroyed but transformed. 

In his paintings of individual or groups of figures, Crews-Chubb conceives of the body as a temporary vessel for energy, spirit, and form. Genderless, deracialized, and ahistorical, his subjects serve as organising structures around which he makes intuitive marks. The artist typically works on ten to twelve canvases simultaneously, so that a body of paintings becomes realised at once. He lays canvas on the floor, spilling ink and throwing or spraying paint, allowing a figure to emerge. He then enters the composition with vigorous scrawls of charcoal, destructing and rebuilding the figure. Sections of raw canvas offer breathing room to an otherwise densely worked surface. He takes a sculptural approach to the paintings, collaging squares of unpainted canvas and coloured fabric atop the existing picture to edit or build up the composition, achieving a depth of surface that cannot be translated to digital images.

Across his work, Crews-Chubb reflects on ancient cosmologies, considering the commonalities among the mythologies of such cultures as the Toltecs, Mayans, Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. Where his previous work referenced specific deities, his recent paintings find a more universal entry point-they explore the very idea of the godlike figure and the synergism behind the fact that so many cultures arrived at the concept of a deity. The Immortals series, of which there are two in this exhibition, recalls the timelessness of depictions of the human figure, as well as its projection into godly realms. Referencing the Cubist approach to depicting a subject from multiple angles at once, he introduces conflicting marks, contours, and profiles, heightening the works' sense of atemporality and flux.

Crews-Chubb's recent work further investigates the phenomenon of pareidolia, a human tendency to find and make sense of patterns within abstract visual information-like finding animal shapes in clouds. This inclination results from the brain seeking safety, as an infant seeks their mother's face from a sea of unknowable sensory input. In his newest paintings, Crews-Chubb offers a melee of texture, line, and form, so that the viewer might undergo their own process of recognition.

This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated monograph published by Anomie, with newly commissioned texts by Jennifer Higgie and Matthew Holman, as well as an interview with Amah-Rose Abrams.