Andrew Moncrief, supported by Gucci

Jun 27, 2022

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Talk Art special episode!!! We meet Andrew Moncrief (b.1987), a visual artist from Comox Valley, Canada. We speak on the eve of Gucci presenting his first exhibition in France at their Saint-Germain boutique, during the men's fashion shows in Paris.

Influenced at an early age by a rigid and immobile interpretation of masculinity, Andrew’s work explores depictions of the male identity, questioning idealism, queerness, and representation. The Canadian artist, now based in Berlin, questions masculinity and the representation of queer bodies in his surreal and powerful canvases inspired by existing images, reworked as collages where colours and shapes intermingle.

For this exhibition, Andrew Moncrief has chosen to create his 5 new paintings inspired by images photographed for this occasion. In collaboration with photographer Julien Barbès, the Canadian artist created a fashion series around five queer Berlin personalities wearing pieces from the Gucci Love Parade collection and offering a diversity of approaches to masculinity. These images, in which bodies move in soft and sensual choreographies, served as the original material for the collages in preparation for the paintings presented this summer in Paris.

”My work deals with my identity as a gay and queer man”, explains the artist. “To compose my collage-like paintings, I usually use existing nude images, but here, everything was built from fashion photos made for the occasion. I am sensitive to clothed bodies, classical drapery and Renaissance painting. Clothes generate tension and folds, as a metaphor for the body and the tensions it is capable of feeling."

In Andrew Moncrief's paintings, the male body seems to be in perpetual metamorphosis. Dislocated and intertwined, he melts into his environment and dialogues with other bodies as much as with colours, textures and clothes. The fluid and hybrid body thus escapes all the categories and norms that society imposes on it. The artist's painting forms an act of freedom and canvases are queer safe spaces where all attitudes and representations become possible. The liberated and phantasmagorical body is celebrated through a palette of delightful colours that explode across the canvas. This new work is also a reference to the famous painter Francis Bacon, and more particularly to his representation of the body crossed as much by the beauty as by the grotesque.

Since graduating with a BFA in Painting & Drawing from Concordia University in 2013, Andrew Moncrief has presented his work internationally in Canada, the U.S.A., and Europe, where he currently lives and works. He has been featured in numerous international publications, is part of respected private collections, and has received a Professional Development Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to pursue a full-time mentorship with Justin Ogilvie to study classical techniques and anatomy in 2019. Andrew has two upcoming shows at New Art Projects and Beers, both in London, UK, as well as a collaboration with GUCCI and Numero Art Magazine, all taking place in the first half of 2022.