Richard Galpin
Cover for Issue 238
Chicago
Issue 238 April 7, 2009
British artist Richard Galpin was born in 1975 and began erasing text and images in 1997. Then, he discovered a simple technique in 2001: with the aid of a scalpel, he found he could score and peel away the surface emulsion from his own photographs to produce a stripped-back version of the urban landscape. The dynamic constructivist-influenced works he now produces are still made this way — from a single partially erased photograph — but the works now manifest futuristic new forms. The exquisite delicacy of the execution belies the destructive undercurrent of the project: is this a utopian or a dystopian re-imagining of present conditions? The works for his current exhibition at Hales Gallery, London are excised photographs of New York, Chicago, London, and Manchester.