Ashmolean NOW: Daniel Crews-Chubb x Flora Yukhnovich

The book will coincide with the first Ashmolean NOW exhibition in Gallery 8, opening in July 2023. The Ashmolean NOW Program features exciting works by prominent early to mid-career artists based in the UK, seeking to attract new audiences interested in contemporary art. Artists who have established international reputations and emerging artists whose international status is anticipated with a strong degree of confidence are approached pro-actively. In addition to exhibiting their existing works, all artists are invited to create at least one new work as a response to the museum and/or its collections. This first exhibition presents two linked solo shows: paintings/drawings by Flora Yukhnovich, and paintings/drawings by Daniel Crews-Chubb. The double-sided style of the book will mirror the exhibition concept, while presenting itself as a unique, well designed object that has a life beyond the exhibition.

Daniel Crews-Chubb (b.1984 in Northampton, lives and works in London) has quickly gained international recognition for his innovative and expressive collage paintings, which interrogate motifs and archetypes of art history, while also linking to the legacies of 20th Century Modernist painting, recalling de Kooning and Art Brut. The paintings of Flora Yukhnovich (b.1990 in Norwich, lives and works in London) offer glimpses of figuration in an otherwise abstract assemblage of brushstrokes, recalling the light, palette and formal considerations favoured by Italian Baroque artists such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and French Rococo artists. Although the two artists’ often large-sized and colourful paintings differ in style, they raise comparable questions about the medium of painting today and how we read a painting against art historical backgrounds. They explore the expressive materiality of paint itself and a gestural painting process. Lena Fritsch is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum. Before joining the Ashmolean in 2017, she worked as Assistant Curator for International Art at Tate Modern. Lena co-curated the large-scale retrospective exhibitions Giacometti (2017) and Agnes Martin (2015), and curated displays of works by artists such as Ai Weiwei and Simryn Gill. She has recently published the acclaimed title Ravens and Red Lipstick. Japanese Photography since 1945, London, New York and Kyoto (Thames & Hudson); Tokyo: Art & Photography (Ashmolean Museum).