Opening speech by curator and author Jan Hoet, Gent.

The restlessness, the rawness, the mysteriousness of his works are based on a field of appealing disharmony that captures one´s attention, keeps one searching and sensing. The beauty of these images is not to be found on the surface but rather in the depth of the artistic methodology. The British painter, composer, musician, poet, performance and video artist Chris Newman (*1958) has been living in Berlin since 1996 and now has his first solo exhibition at Alexander Ochs Galleries.

To find the beauty in Chris Newman´s paintings, one does not need to know the background of his work. It is even less required to identify any potential remnants of narratives. It is a sense of body, a genuine unconscious and the dismissal of rational control that makes Newman´s works so lively and filled with deeper beauty.

Chris Newman -