Monday 23 May 2011


The Gallery Cafe presents a selection of new paintings and prints by Carl Stimpson. Gallery Cafe, 21 Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9PL. Privet View - Thursday, June 2nd at 7:30pm - June 29th at 6:30pm.

Redolent of wartime propaganda posters, Carl Stimpson’s paintings are a call to arms against the visual doldrums. Dominated by images of soldiers hurrying to battle, appropriated from Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Boy Commandos comics of the 1940’s, Stimpson’s paintings make exigent the allegory of visual immediacy. Ballooning breasts of femmes fatales appropriated from Frank Frazetta’s illustrated fantasy-worlds, playfully contrast and sexualise the images of war and machinery that they exaggeratedly tower above. Like the chiselled chin of a Waffen SS guard, their over-developed protrusion incites a feverish compliance. Although no blood is actually seen to be spilled in these painted narratives, the smack of red lipgloss, or the claret of a revealing nightgown, suggest a sanguinary conclusion.

In opposition to the terrifying rhetoric within the captions of propaganda posters, Stimpson’s narrators express – through thought balloons, not speech bubbles – their internal malaise and human conditions. Incongruously, these thoughts recall lyrics from songs, devoid of their original context, they take on sinister and wistful undertones. These are paintings to arouse the army of the psyche, beware the consequences.
All are welcome to the privet view on the first Thursday of June. If you can come along that would be great.
All the best. Carl.



HAIL TO THE KING!
artists pay tribute to Jack Kirby
curated by Jason Atomic & Garry Vanderhorne

featuring:
Feroze Alam, Jason Atomic, Anthony Ausgang, Angela Edwards, Finlay Cowan, Espira, Dennis Franklin, The Gothic Hangman, Vlad Quigley, Skot Reynolds, Carl Stimpson, Suckadelic, Mark Wigan, Yes Future...

Original soundtrack inspired by the life of Kirby by Joe Alexander Melotte
special closing event organised by UK comics expert Paul Gravett to be announced!!!

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