Nicholas Cheveldave – The Mortician’s Athlete and the Dreaded Barista

La mostra The Mortician’s Athlete and the Dreaded Barista è una personale di Nicholas Cheveldave.

Comunicato stampa

Nicholas Cheveldave’s new body of work takes as its point of departure aspects of contemporary “café culture” and blends it with various forms of mundane life, homogenizing these identity constructs through forms of mediation such as digitally animated collage, painting and sculpture to make visceral and fleshly objects that gravitate towards the grotesque.

Cheveldave derives the exhibition title from The Mortician’s Athlete, a 1918 poem by Francis Picabia, and from the notion of the 'Dreaded Barista', whom he describes as “ the espresso connoisseur, the know-it-all, who reminds you that three cups of coffee a day is probably destroying your liver… I would never think about my liver unless I am reminded that it exists inside of me.”

The idea of the portmanteau − the words whose forms and meanings are derived through blending − transcends the rhetoric of the ‘glocal’ net-generation and enters the canvas as multilayered compositions that synthesize coffee culture goods with the ins and outs of the dreaded barista. One is left to wonder if it is possible to escape the subordinating corporate cubicles or if the same futility hides behind the frappucinos and bottle tops of microbreweries?

Nic will be in conversation with Samuel Leuenberger, curator and director of SALTS, Basel, on Saturday, 11th of April at 12, noon, in occasion of the third edition of the Bratwurst Talks.

The exhibition is open to public every day from 11 – 6pm or by appointment.

Nicholas Cheveldave (b. 1984, Canada) completed his MFA in Fine Art Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014. Recent exhibitions of Nic’s work include ALL FOR NOTHING, curated by CHEWDAY’S at Carl Kostyal, London (2015), NATIONAL GALLERY, curated by CHEWDAY’S at Grand Century, New York, (2014), Basement Scene, Wood Mill, London, (2014) and Lost in Translation, curated by Victor Wang, ONO Gallery at UKS, Olso, March 2013. Nic lives and works in London, UK.