John Isaacs

John Isaacs’ work encompasses many different medias, though much of it has its origins in sculpture. Best known for his large-scale human figures, these bodies are often of grotesque proportions and appear gruesomely real. The sculpture 'I can’t help the way I feel', 2003 is a body of fat that seemingly envelopes it’s own head. This figure, unable to be a complete body, is both monstrous and pathetic. For his 2005 show he produced 'Let the golden age begin', 2005, a full size, standing self-portrait. Isaacs has depicted himself with an illuminated head, drinking a beer, standing in a metal bathtub full of water and bottles of beer. The bathtub sits on a make shift set of wheels and has a cracked stylised head of a swan at one end. It mimics an abandoned fun fair ride in Treptower Park, Berlin whilst also instilling the piece with a sense of half hearted merriment. The standing figure is a portrait of the artist, or indeed anyone else, lost in a kind of reverie, a hopeless dream induced by alcohol where all things are possible and visible. The glowing head appears to be the result of a kind of false enlightenment, or a sham eureka moment, adding to the atmosphere of failure. His sculpture explores, tongue in cheek, the seriousness of existence and our habit sometimes of becoming too involved in the rules we have made for ourselves. In much of Isaacs’ work, there is a strong Romantic streak, a sense that under the surface of our apparent isolation from one another lays a universal connection between us all.

Exhibitions include Lisson Gallery, London (1993), Young British Artists 6, Saatchi Gallery, London (1996), Matrix of Amnesia at Imperial College, London (1997), Spectacular Bodies, Hayward Gallery, London (2000), and Century City, Tate Modern (2001), Voices from the ID Beasonsfield, London (2002), the Uncanny, Tate Liverpool (2004), Fraktale IV, Palast der Rebuplik, Berlin (2005), Grande Spectacle, Museum der Art Moderne Salzburg (2005).

 

Born 1968, Lancaster, UK. He lives and works in Berlin.

 

Represented by Museum 52, London



John Isaacs

John Isaacs

John Isaacs

John Isaacs

John Isaacs