4 - Off The Shelf - Solo Show - 2015

Fabien Castanier Gallery is proud to present Off The Shelf, a solo exhibition by Luke Newton. Newton is a young British artist currently living and working in Paris, and this will be his debut solo exhibition in the United States.

Off The Shelf presents a lighthearted satirical assessment of what it is to live in a commercially and technologically driven society. Newton recalls Marcel Duchamp with his use of appropriation to unshackle factory made utilitarian wares into hand-made pieces of art. Taking these everyday items and ideas on which we depend, Newton re-makes them into sleek vibrant artworks, devoid of functionality. He disconnects these pieces from their intended roles, inflates their aesthetic value, and places them in a gallery context to be consumed and reflected upon.

Through a variety of mediums, he supersizes and re-contextualizes the things that make-up our modern lives. Everything from e-cigarettes, shopping carts, iPads, and hashtags are all reborn as paintings, sculptures and mixed media objects made from non-traditional materials. By reorganizing the roles of these everyday articles, Luke Newton sparks a subversive yet important conversation about the things we own and how they define us.

Fabien Castanier Gallery, 2015