In these paintings Luke Elwes explores the landscape of memory. As well as recording particular journeys (to North Africa, Tibet and central America), the paintings reveal, like a hieroglyphic text, the many layers of history buried beneath the surfaces of these places. They become maps of the ‘geographical unconscious’, suggesting both the trail of our presence and the passage of time. As Odilon Redon put it, they place ‘the logic of the visible in the service of the invisible’ (‘La logique du visible au service de l’invisible’).
Luke Elwes exhibits regularly with Art First Contemporary Art in London and New York, as well as, more recently, with Galleria Ceribelli in Bergamo Italy. The paintings in this exhibition come from the recent Refugia series and it is represents the first opportunity to see his recent work in Paris since 2001.