Rose Wylie: Let it Settle

Let it Settle is an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Rose Wylie. Curated by Rodolphe von Hofmannsthal, Senior Director, David Zwirner and Jari-Juhani Lager, the show is part of a three-year collaboration between the gallery and the Royal Academy in London. Wylie was elected as a Royal Academician in 2014.

For her work, Wylie draws from cultural arenas including film, fashion photography, literature, mythology, history, news reports, and sports, making colorful and exuberant compositions that are uniquely recognizable. The artist works primarily from memory, resulting in paintings and drawings that are replete with associative afterimages that remain only loosely tethered to their original referents, but tightly connected to the memories as they have developed over time. 

As Russell Tovey writes in the catalogue accompanying Let it Settle, “Borrowing threads from observation and popular culture, Rose amalgamates scenes for a carnival of creatures to play in, every piece expanding across the wall like a woven tapestry, continuing beyond sight like the Bayeux itself, as tour de force from an inspired dramaturge. The works hum with life as constant moving scenes of action … Rose directs us to notice what she wants us to notice, creating a dialogue between her players, an actual script, written across the works.”

Listen to Wylie and Tovey on Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast—the pair discuss improvisation, instincts, and creative influences in a conversation T Magazine describes as ”charmingly off-the-cuff.”

The artist’s work is on view in a solo exhibition at David Zwirner in Hong Kong, painting a noun…, through February 22, 2020. In parallel with the exhibition, an online viewing room titled endlessleyinappropriate presents hand-finished prints in which Wylie examines her personal history through the lens of memorable garments.

Image: Rose Wylie, Snowwhite (2) One Day her Prince Will Come, 2018 (detail)