Andrew Webb(° 1966), artist of our gallery since 2004, suddenly passed away in March 2019 at his residence in Sandwich (UK). Muhka (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) made a intimate exhibition last year (May – August 2021).
Webb was born in Warwickshire, England, and studied at the Goldsmith's College, University of London. After a short stay in Spain, he and his partner Jon Thompson moved to Belgium in the mid-1990s, where he lived first in Antwerp and then in Brussels until 2008. From 2008 he lived and worked in Sandwich (Kent, England).
Andrew Webb's oeuvre initially consists of conceptually based objects and collages. Although his oeuvre is influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism, it is definitely contemporary and makes frequent use of language with visual and phonetic puns and anagrams, humour and eroticism. Jean Fisher (1942 - 2016) wrote: "Webb works with the visual-verbal pun, the anagram and the portmanteau word that more often than not conceal a sexual meaning. They form the hinge what Duchamp called a 'corridor of humour' through which our expectations of language and meaning are disrupted and experience is opened up to the play of fantasy."
The A and the W, Webb's initials appear frequently in his oeuvre : the Alpha and the Omega form Webb's cosmic connection.
From 2011 Andrew Webb concentrated on painting with his own typical brushwork in oil on canvas. The last paintings found in Andrew Webb's studio refer to his important spatial works "The aristocratic Hairline Machine", "The Line of Saved", and the use of missals in his collages, paintings and sculptures.
The Annie Gentils gallery is organising a retrospective exhibition including the most recent paintings as found at his studio in Sandwich where he conceived a new exhibition to be held in spring 2019.
The title comes from a poem of Andrew Webb:
The Persistent fluttering
of The Butterfly
outside My Window,
Casts its Shadow,
Dancing on the Studio Floor.
He can see I am painting,
Heavenly Flowers.
https://www.andrewwebb.org:Andrew Webb B.A.Hons, Licencié ès Lettres, Trichologist,)
Artists: Andrew Webb
