Barnaby Furnas

Artforum magazine said of Barnarby Furnas's debut solo show that ""the real drama lies not so much in the kissing, shooting, and running figures that populate Furnas's pictures as in the artist's knowing investigation of painterly form. Revisiting the dichotomies at the heart of modernist painting, Furnas manipulates the boundaries between figure and ground, form and formlessness, and figuration and abstraction."" His often violent oil paintings and watercolors also investigate the human condition, evoking fantasies and nightmares of love, death and conflict in a style influenced by special effects and video game animation. Subjects range widely, but a unity of theme prevails: John Brown portrays the legendary antislavery militant; Suicide, a man's head exploding into fireworks. Furnas is based in Brooklyn, and has exhibited to great acclaim in both the UK and the United States, where he is represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. This, his first monograph, includes an essay by critic Martin Herbert and an in-depth interview with the artist.