Kristin Hjellegjerde company logo
Kristin Hjellegjerde
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Exhibitions
  • Artists
  • Art Fairs
  • Store
  • Press
  • News
  • Video
  • About
  • Contact
  • Viewing Room
Menu

Amir Chasson: days of oil and gas

Past exhibition
28 June - 27 July 2013
  • Overview
  • Works
  • Installation Views
  • Press
Amir Chasson, days of oil and gas
View works

DAYS OF OIL AND GAS 

 

Kristin Hjellegjerde | ArtEco Gallery, London, is proud to present the solo exhibition days of oil and gas, featuring a large-scale installation by Amir Chasson. Running from 28th June to 27th July, Chasson's centerpiece, an 18-metre-long canvas, will wind around the gallery like a slumbering leviathan, embracing walls and cutting the space in half, transcending its two-dimensional presence to expand into and occupy the gallery space.

 

The gargantuan painting that comprises days of oil and gas is both a traditional panoramic work and a site-specific installation, created to fit the exact measurements of the gallery. The painting shows a group of corporate executives sitting at a conference table. But it is so large that it is hard to take in: the viewer must circle the space to comprehend it. Inevitably, you wonder who these people are. But for Chasson, the faces have no intrinsic meaning: they are composites made from randomly-selected images.

 

"What is more important to me than the subject matter is the idea of this huge work being forced into a small space. I wanted to give a sense of a painting that has leapt off the wall and grown to monstrous proportions, to completely dominate the gallery. So much so, in fact, that it leaves you almost no room to move. Unlike a painting on a wall, silent and contained, this is an aggressive work that intrudes on you, invades your space and will not be ignored."

 

The rough, unfinished reverse side of the canvas also cannot be ignored: it is very purposefully left on full display. This interplay between front and back was a prominent feature of Chasson's last solo show, My French Nurse's Dream (Outpost Gallery, Norwich, August 2012), in which the "backstage" aspect of the work was just as important as what was "onstage". Chasson is intrigued by the idea of peeking behind the theatre curtains to see how the illusion is constructed. "What happens if you go behind the scenes of a puppet theatre?" he asks. "On one level, it can be disappointing to see how it all works. But it can also provide another way to view the work."

 

In this context, the faces in the paintings are like puppets in a puppet show, with no insight into the strings and winches hiding in the wings, behind the curtains, that animate them. The faces are also another aspect of the interplay between front and back. Chasson sees the face as a veneer that ultimately betrays what lies beneath - "the neuroses that always come to the surface, whether through a skin rash or a sad, longing gaze". The wrinkled surface of the raw, fleshy canvas, exposed on both sides as the viewer circumnavigates the work, can also be seen as a kind of skin.

 

The installation of the main piece acts as a focal point creating a sense of discomfort, challenging the viewer to look deeper, the very presence of the painting cutting across fields of vision, its great size coiled like a spring stuffed into a box, or a square peg into a round hole - at once a serious miscalculation of space and dimensions, and a carefully-planned interplay of presence and non-presence, both obstructing and revealing.

Download Press Release
Download List of Works

Related artist

  • Amir Chasson

    Amir Chasson

Share
  • Facebook
  • X
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Back to exhibitions

LONDON (TOWER BRIDGE) 

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery 

36 Tanner Street

London SE1 3LD 

+44 (0) 20 39046349

Tues–Sat: 11am–6pm

 

LONDON (WANDSWORTH) 

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

533 Old York Road

London SW18 1TG

+44 (0) 20 88705225

Tues–Sat: 11am–6pm

 

BERLIN

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Mercator Höfe
Potsdamer Str. 77-87
10785 Berlin

+49 30-49950912
Tues–Sat: 11am–6pm

WEST PALM BEACH

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

2414 Florida Avenue

West Palm Beach, FL 

33401 USA

+1 (561) 922-8688

Tues-Sat: 11am-6pm

Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Twitter, opens in a new tab.
Artsy, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2025 Kristin Hjellegjerde
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences