SIMON ENGLISH: my big self decoy justin beiber brings together a significant new body of painted drawings by the artist that format themselves around the double page spread, with both image and text on the page to invite and resist quiet contemplation. These exquisitely delicate and brutal drawings tussle with one another for space, pulling the viewer into the energetic and colourful vortex of the artist’s psyche. Diaries jostle with devotions, desires and disputes — a confabulation of friction and fiction in a place where fact and fetish collide. Simon English draws across the blank page with the instincts of one entering cyberspace. His surfing history is left only too clear on the surface of the page, or buried beneath heavy black deletions and over-painting. His are the “old” gremlins — the monsters within that say one is too much and more is never enough. In 2004, Bill Arning wrote that “for picture addicts like myself, English is the equivalent of a crack dealer”. The work in the book is brought together with written contributions from Laurence Scott, whose text emanates from English’s imaginary database, Sally O’Reilly has created a voice somewhere between art, theory, fiction and fantasy and Hendrik Jackson and Verena Stauffer have written a conversational poem based on their encounters with the works.

Simon English is a Berlin-born artist based in London who made is debut in “Young British Artists 111” at the Saatchi Gallery in 1994.
Since then, his work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and institutions worldwide.
Laurence Scott is a writer and author of the book The Four-Dimensional Human.
Sally O’Reilly is a writer and critic who recently published her first novel, Crude.
Hendrik Jackson is a writer, lyricist, translator and editor of the internet portal www.lyrikkritik.de.
Verena Stauffer is a poet and philosopher based in Vienna.
OFFICIAL BOOK LAUNCH ON MARCH, 22nd AT HARCHARDS, LONDON.
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