Charlie Smith London is delighted to present Alex Gene Morrison with his second one person exhibition at the gallery.

This new collection of paintings signifies a culmination of ideas that Morrison has been exploring for over ten years. There is a distinctively anthropological feeling to his images of skulls, forests, monsters and totemic abstract forms that call to mind the primitive and tribal. Signifiers of fire and raw electrical energy convey thoughts of destruction, transformation and re-animation via elemental forces. Morrison reminds us that there are embedded, archetypal elements within us that abridge modern and primeval man. Simultaneously, ongoing obsessions with horror and sci-fi movies; video games; sub cultural design; alternative music and the oppressive, unrelenting rhythms of Doom Metal all seep into and out of the work.

This sense of deep time, which is intrinsic to the work, is coupled with a knowing enquiry into Modern abstract painting, where Morrison references formalist tropes that were defined by 20th century avant-garde movements including Suprematism, Vorticism, Abstract Expressionism and Neo-Geo. Inherent within all of these was a departure from representation and gravitation towards a search for purity of expression and the universal via abstraction. Morrison intelligently absorbs these ideological and painterly languages, and in doing so, creates a unique and alternative visual language that invites his audience to go behind the surface through fractures, splits and tears. Rendered in dark, textured paint and in combination with his use of archetypal simulacra, Morrison presents us with resonant, metaphysical paintings.

Alex Gene Morrison is a contemporary artist born in Birmingham in 1975. He studied painting at the Royal College of Art between 2000-2002. After leaving the RCA he was one of the founders of the Rockwell Gallery and Studios in Dalston, London 2002-2007, an influential London artist run space. He is a lecturer in Fine Art Painting at City and Guilds of London Art School.

Morrison works predominantly with painting and video/animation. He had a solo show at Stella Vine's Gallery Rosy Wilde in 2004. He has had solo shows at Rockwell Gallery, London, in 2006, at The Fishmarket Gallery, Northampton, in 2007, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, in 2008 and Charlie Smith Gallery, London, in 2010. His painting was exhibited in the John Moores Painting Prize in Liverpool in 2009. Morrison's work has been shown internationally, from New York to Tokyo.