PADDINGTON
OFFICE SPACE
1/8 Soudan Lane Paddington NSW 2021
Fox Jensen / Sydney & Fox Jensen McCrory / Auckland announce two new spaces including a major exhibition space in Alexandria, Sydney as well as a new office in the heart of the Paddington Art Precinct.
Since opening in Sydney a decade ago, Fox Jensen has continued its quiet growth, deepening and refining its program on both sides of the Tasman. The range of solo projects and curated exhibitions has at times tested the physical envelope of the Paddington gallery so it was with a view to the future that the galleries have added a considerably larger, Sydney space.
Based in Alexandria, the new exhibition space will provide the opportunity to extend the scale and duration of the gallery projects, an opportunity that is driven by our desire to meet the aspirations and efforts of both our local and international artists.
For over thirty years now the galleries have presented the work of more international artists in Australasia than any private gallery. Much of this has been conducted discreetly – an approach that foregrounds the artists and their work and resists the comfort of the provincial. Of course the 2020 program has necessarily been affected by Covid-19 in both countries but this complicated period inevitably invites reflection and opportunity to plan. And whilst there have been delays with international freight and travel has been halted, the extended neighbourhood we have built feels even more vital.
Sydney’s program this year included a poignant and beautiful exhibition by Australian born, American painter Lawrence Carroll (1954-2019), a project by acclaimed Fred Sandback followed by the first solo project by Los Angeles painter Liat Yossifor.
Paintings by Günter Umberg in the Paddington gallery were then last exhibition in that site. Overlapping with the Umberg exhibition we are thrilled to announce the opening of FOX/JENSEN ALEXANDRIA. The inaugural solo exhibition in Alexandria is of Austrian painter Hanns Kunitzberger whose works have recently made their way from Berlin to Sydney. Kunitzberger’s paintings express the fundamental qualities that motivate this gallery. The works are exquisitely made, filled with an emotional and psychological portent, they serve to reaffirm that the very best painting is capable of carrying the conceptual and sensory dimensions more commonly afforded to literature and music and yet the very best painting speaks and plays to our eyes, our hearts and our minds with a volume and intensity that still manages to transcend the avalanche of visual clutter that we are increasingly subsumed by.
Amidst these developments for the gallery, we will be presenting a group of new paintings by Tomislav Nikolic. Rather than an exhibition Tomislav has quietly prepared a discreet suite of paintings under the unwelcome concentration of extended lockdowns in Victoria. Tomislav Nikolic is a painter whose work as much as any we know here seamlessly ignores the guardrails of the local, making work that is extravagant, intelligent and singular.
These new works continue his personal dialogue with historical art figures – in this group of works it is Eduaord Manet. These paintings will be able to be seen at FOX JENSEN PADDINGTON’s new private viewing room in Soudan Lane. Situated next door to respected colleague Roslyn Oxley we have made a viewing room where works can be viewed with time, discretion…and a little comfort.
Fox Jensen & Fox Jensen McCrory have been blessed to have enjoyed relationships with a magnificent group of artists from around the world. We look forward to continuing to share these opportunities with our audience despite the challenges of our times. We have long believed that isolation is as much a state of mind as a geographical constraint but during this period we will need to work even harder to diminish the physical distance that separates us. So bringing the work of artists whom we admire to these shores feels as critical as ever.
– Andrew Jensen, 2020
