George Morton-Clark. It’s Friday All Week

January 11st - February 10th, 2024

Opera Gallery

Calle de Serrano, 56. Madrid, Spain

It’s Friday All Week is the title of George Morton-Clark's first solo exhibition in Spain. The exhibition brings together around twenty of the British artist's most recent works, in which visitors can discover the animated characters that inhabit his paintings, as well as the naturalness and joy that he manages to inspire in those who contemplate his works. A creative universe built thanks to the zest for life and action that underpins his work.

Morton-Clark's work evokes a cast of characters that we all shared in our childhood. To create them, however, the powerful brushstroke or energetic scrawl he uses distorts the childish world we once inhabited and the artist remembers, giving rise to his particular “animalarium”.In his own words:«All paintings are an amalgamation of images in my head and characters I spent a long time with. They come out in different forms and different expressions. All the time, I feel I am trying to make them more vacant-looking and void of any real emotion. I am not sure why I do this, but it makes them more innocent and friendly. This is what I like about them. The newer works have become more abstract as if the characters are imploding and eating themselves. As if they are infinitely folding into themselves». Characters who present themselves to the observer with freshness and self-confidence, but who never stop looking at themselves. Big eyes and exaggerated expressions evoke emotions —from surprise to fear—, that intrigue and pique our curiosity, as Morton-Clark constructs an intimate narrative that both reflects our collective imagination and challenges our shared experience.

The works that Opera Gallery is exhibiting at its headquarters in Madrid, at Calle Serrano 56, are alive both in their chromatic rotundity and in their elegant visual dance, inviting the viewer to participate in a moment of hedonism and excitement, perhaps the moment when an adult approaches the images of their childhood and discovers in them a new sense of vitality and meaning.

This is why the Opera Gallery is interested in this artist. Because both share a philosophy of vital optimism, and because the gallery’s approach, in the words of Belén Herrera Ottino, director of the Madrid branch, is “to bring art and its enriching and transforming role closer to our society, and also to be part of the cultural fabric of the cities where its different branches are located, supporting and disseminating the work of its artists at an international level: “ThinkingGlobal – Acting Local”. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a text by the art critic Pedro Medina.

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