STEVEN ALLAN (SCOTTISH B. 1984)
One off the bunch
2012
oil on canvas
190 x 130 cm
ARR

Provenance:
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2012

Exhibition History:
London, Saatchi Gallery, New Order: British Art Today, 26 April 2013 - 16 January 2014
London, Bloomsbury House, Saatchi Gallery, New Sensations 2012, October 2012

Artist Description:
Steven Allan’s works are paintings that act like prints. His brushstrokes seem not so much applied as gouged, their scratched and apparently subtractive strokes redolent of the physicality of the woodblock printer rather than the delicacy of the painter. It’s perhaps the starkness of the printed image that particularly appeals to Allan: his works seem lit by flashes of lightning, the shadows graphic and hard. Their allusions to the printed picture calls to mind a history of book illustration that seems relevant to Allan’s curious iconography of characters. His banana men, leaping, scuttling or dancing in wild abandon, seem distant cousins of Tenniel’s proto-surrealist images for ‘Alice in Wonderland’.