Issy Wood: Wet Reckless

Michael Werner Gallery, Beverly Hills is pleased to present Issy Wood: Wet Reckless, an exhibition of new paintings by American-born, British painter and musician Issy Wood (b. 1993 in Durham, North Carolina).

Wood’s paintings are autobiographical without giving too much away. Balancing confession and concealment, the artist paints intimate pictures with a self-described “smudgy pointillism.” Subjects are chosen for their seductive qualities. Wood describes her choice of subjects as, “capital S Seduction, everything shiny, everything pretty, everything beautifully photographed.” The result is essentially pictures of pictures. The works attempt to both create distance from and instill reverence in the depicted subject: a reluctant dialogue with advertising, the internet, and desire itself.

Despite their supposed allure, Wood finds a latent ugliness in her subjects. In this exhibition, the artist paints, among other objects, cars and guns, two objects that are both coveted and dangerous. This informs the exhibition’s title, which borrows its name from a lesser drunk-driving charge in the state of California. The legal term is both accidentally erotic and damning. Wood treats her own face the same way: the self-portraits are elusive, with her face either partially covered or cropped. They indicate her fear of being fully seen but an urge to still be understood in a deeper sense. The artist has said, “There are as many realities as there are people. I can only try to outline my own world and hope it overlaps, even briefly, with somebody else’s.”

Issy Wood studied at Goldsmiths and the Royal Academy of Art in London. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide, including most recently at TANK Shanghai; Aspen Art Museum; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; and Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul. Her work is in the collections of numerous prestigious institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Portrait Gallery, London; Dallas Museum of Art; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Sharjah Art Foundation; and Tate, London, to name a few. Wood lives and works in London.

Issy Wood: Wet Reckless opens to the public on Saturday 15 February with an opening reception from 5pm to 7pm and will remain on view through Saturday 5 April. A catalogue with a conversation between Issy Wood and Naomi Fry, staff writer at The New Yorker, will accompany the exhibition. An in-person conversation between Wood and Fry will take place at the gallery on Wednesday 19 February at 5pm. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm.