From Anthony Gormley to Marlene Dumas, Matthew Barney to Marc Quinn, representations of the human figure can be found throughout contemporary art. Alternatively understood as an embodiment of the artist, a mirror of the viewer, or a means of exploring identity, the body remains a potent site of aesthetic investigation. It is this word ‘investigation’ that is crucial, for the bodies we find throughout this exhibition seem to lack coherence, stability, and unity. In contrast, they appear as sites of endless exploration: uneven terrains meant to be picked apart, unpacked, fragmented, dispersed, and shattered. And as the artists investigate the body, we, as viewers, investigate their art. Seeking not to arrive at a fixed conclusion, but seeking to understand these aesthetic processes of dispersion; discovering meaning not in the glue that pieces these bodily fragments together but in the fissions and the cracks that tear them apart.

Benjamin Cohen and Tom de Freston, the two artists on whom I will focus tonight, insert these ideas of the fragmented, multiplied and dispersed body within a traditional format of painting. In this way, these two artists can be said to impart a thoroughly ‘contemporary’ sensibility through a classical language of technique and form. This ‘schizophrenic’ approach, to borrow the language of Deleuze and Guattari, is also reflected in their paintings’ content, which juxtaposes iconic religious imagery with the banal and the mundane. While the work of these two artists can be discussed in relation to one another, my focus will be on the differences between their paintings and the uniqueness of their artistic visions. Perhaps as a reflection of the bodies themselves, my intention is not to present a ‘singular’ or ‘absolute’ reading of this work, but rather to suggest a series of propositions, potential approaches and contextualizations. Interpretations that I hope might stimulate later discussions and serve as a catalyst for further insights.

The first artist I will discuss is Tom de Freston. Holding a Masters degree in the History of Art from the University of Cambridge, Freston remains actively involved in the university’s teaching and research departments. This ongoing engagement with and knowledge of Art History is reflected in his paintings, which are often saturated with iconic art historical images from Titian to Géricault and Manet. One example of this style of reference is his 2009 painting A Brief History of Heroism. While the male figures clad in red shorts, socks and white masks dominate the canvas, closer inspection reveals a number of iconic female forms as well. In the center of the painting, on the lower panel of pale pink that stretches across its entire breadth, we find a line drawing replica of Manet’s famous painting Olympia, which shocked the French bourgeoisie upon its 1863 unveiling due to its depiction of green-tinged ‘cadaverous’ flesh and aggressive feminine gaze. Contrasting this image of the sickly or debased woman is the line drawing on the far left of the canvas’s lower panel, which replicates Titian’s resplendent Venus of Urbino painting from 1538, currently hanging at London’s National Gallery. In a published interview from 2009, Freston suggests that his artistic license derives in part from this ‘cannibalization’ of art historical forms; in his words, “I like the image of me literally devouring these past images and excreting and regurgitating them back out onto the canvas. I think the mass of the quotations and the context in which they sit makes it clear that this is something different to mere plagiarism. […] Through the sheer mass of references, almost all of which are canonical and weighty, I am looking to pick away at the very fabric of the structure and system in which these images have been housed.”

With this extensive multiplication of references, Freston flattens a linear art historical timeline within a single pictorial plane. The original context of the forms he quotes is forgotten, rendered virtually meaningless. Different historical periods and artistic styles are treated in the same manner and compressed into a single frame. This style of art historical quotation, executed in an almost hysterical palette of vibrant colors and overlapping forms, bears a sharp resemblance to certain works by German artists in the 1980s. Building upon the foundation laid by an earlier generation of artists such as Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and above all Joseph Beuys, 1980s Germany saw an explosion of creativity centered on the reanimation of painting. As the critic Wolfgang Max Faust wrote in 1982: “What’s new, in relation to the ‘60s and ‘70s, is that an entire generation of artists is turning to painting. The result is that recent developments are being reinterpreted: Through the young generation’s massive rediscovery of painting, painters who were already around in the previous decade are being seen in a new context.” Movements like the Neue Wilde – the use of rapid, expressive gesture and intense color exemplified by the artists Martin Kippenberger and Walter Dahn – as well as Neo-Surrealists like Salvo and Milan Kunc all seem to influence Freston’s vibrant, emotive and theatrical art. His interest in the medium of painting itself as both tool and content – he writes in his artist’s statement that “paint as a linguistic tool […] is the central and continuing theme of the paintings” – could easily be explored in relation to this previous generation’s rediscovery of and fascination with painting and its history.

The work of these German painters, and in particular the Neo-Surrealists, also bears a distinct resemblance to Freston’s use of architectural space. The human figures in his paintings are set against geometrical ‘stages’ composed of platforms, grids, claustrophobic rooms, and partitioned background sets. The spaces that result appear illusory and dream-like, much like the otherworldly landscapes of Giorgio di Chirico. In the way that his paintings destabilize a linear art history – the almost hallucinogenic juxtaposition of past images stripping them of fixed or understandable chronology – Freston’s canvases also destabilize traditional perspective and three-dimensional geometric space. This ‘unreality’ of space is further augmented by the impression of weightlessness and an absence of gravity. In A Lover’s Discourse (the three panels horizontally aligned) and A Lover’s Discourse II (the two panels vertically aligned), the solitary figures appear to float as though in a outer-space vacuum chamber. Named for Roland Barthes’ book of textual ‘fragments’ that describe the inescapable loneliness of a lover who can never truly see the one they love, Freston’s bodies are similarly fragmented and apart. Other ‘weightless’ figures, which further emphasize the ‘unreality’ of Freston’s architectural spaces, include his Desire for the fall paintings, his Floater canvas, and the two paintings entitled The Boy Whose Head Came Off, in which the body, like space, cannot be held together.

But how does this particular de-realization of architectural space fit together with the previously discussed abundance of art historical references? What is the relationship between these stylistic or ‘painterly’ qualities and a subject matter that is often overwhelming sadistic? From bestiality to rape to mutilation, how do we reconcile these disturbing images with the almost childlike frivolity and pathetic humour in which they come wrapped? What do we make of the reoccurring appearance of the ‘anti-hero’ clad solely in boxers and red socks? How should we, as viewers, approach or make sense of this work? I have focused my discussion thus far on the formal and stylistic qualities of Freston’s painting because – for me – they are fundamental to my understanding of his subject matter. To put it most simply, Freston presents us with the painting as ‘theatre’ – as stage. As theatregoers enter a willed suspension of disbelief, I find myself approaching his paintings as spaces of exception in which centuries seem to pass in a single moment (art historical referencing) and vast landscapes coalesce within a single black box (his de-realization of space). Entering Freston’s theatre, we discover the star himself – a role-playing figure in red socks, a Pasolini of painters – who beckons us inside his fairground of fantasy and myth. In the painting Fast Judgment he poses at the bottom left of the canvas with arms stretched wide, waving us through as though he was a circus ringmaster, giving us the right of entry to explore this alternate world of horror shows, cosmic tours, and judgment days.

The work of the second artist I will discuss, Benjamin Cohen, is substantially different. While he also focuses on the male figure, whose nudity is rendered somehow humorous by the limited elements of clothing that remain (in Cohen’s work the glasses, in Freston’s work, the red boxers and socks), Cohen’s focus appears to be more on the figure itself rather than the context in which that figure is placed. The one exception to this statement is his painting Girish 1 from 2008. A naked figure sits hunched on a wooden stool, hands folded together in his lap. Head tilted slightly to the left and with a grimace on his face, he peers straight ahead, to a space outside the painting’s frame. We, as viewers, are presented with his profile, a dark shadow on his cheeks indicating day-old stubble and his body lit from a light-filled window situated in the background. Evocative of a life-drawing class or a painting’s studio, the painting captures the boredom and annoyance of the male model while also illustrating the development of Cohen’s artistic style.

This style is more clearly realized in his later work from 2009, in particular, the painting Girish II (seen on the Corpus exhibition poster) and the diptych painting Oumar. Both of these paintings present the central figure (or figures) against flat areas of seductive colour that seem impersonally applied. The bright, pleasing palette of these works – which sharply contrast with Freston’s almost sickening terrain of vomit-like pinks and over-saturation – undercut the potentially disturbing elements of the bodies themselves. In Girish II, the figure thrusts his chest forward and holds his hands open at his sides in a gesture of martyrdom or supplication – an impression that is also evoked by the patches of blood red in his palms and trailing down his legs. While chest, hands, and stomach are clearly defined, the head and legs evaporate into streams of paint, as if he is either being devoured by or breaking through the flat plane of the canvas. This feeling that the human figures are either intruding into or perhaps being covered by the wall of gently coloured paint is also present in the diptych Oumar. The three overweight and fragmentary female forms contrast with the wash of green and white that obscures the figures’ heads and legs, as though Jenny Saville’s tumescent female forms were thrust into a Gary Hume painting. It is this juxtaposition in Cohen’s work that fascinates me: the play between the physical beauty of his paintings and their disturbing undercurrents of body dysmorphia and physical shame. This juxtaposition deserves further elaboration, particularly in the context of his other work’s focus on faces that are similarly obscured by dashes of paint. I look forward to the artists’ responses and hope that some of the ideas I have presented will stimulate further discussion. Many thanks for your time and many thanks to Tom and Benjamin for giving us such wonderful work to discuss.