Buchmann Lugano plays host Thursday 30 June from 5pm, to the works of the British artist Fiona Rae (Hong Kong, *1963). 

The exhibition focuses on the cycle of paintings entitled Row Paintings, completed towards the end of the 1980s, a time when painting as a technique was considered outdated by many. Whilst shaping her own new visual language, it was indeed against this context that Fiona Rae began her pioneering commitment to finding new frames of reference for the potential offered by painting. 

From a compositional point of view, Row Paintings, structured into rows, as suggested by the title, appear like annotations. However, the apparently rigid organisation is repeatedly denied by gestural additions: splashes of colour and shade claim their own space, upsetting the rigour of the layout. With 1988’s Freeze exhibition at London Docklands, Fiona Rae established herself as one of the first members of the group known as the Young British Artists (YBA) which would revolutionise the world of art, both in Britain and beyond. The selected paintings were exhibited in London at the Serpentine Gallery in 1989, at the British Art Show at the Hayward Gallery in 1990 and at the Kunsthalle in Basel in 1992. 

In addition to Row Paintings, gouaches and watercolours realised between 2016 and 2020 are presented for the first time. Through the latter, focused on delicate and fluid tones, the artist creates grounds in which the boundaries between fields of colour are blurred. This space is then combined with graphic gestural strokes, sometimes merely suggested, permitting both figurative and abstract interpretations. 

From 2021 to 2022, the Centre d'art La Malmaison in Cannes dedicated a solo exhibition to the artist, also displaying a number of accompanying gouaches and watercolours. Fiona Rae's works feature in numerous public collections, including the Tate Collection UK, the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin and the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg. 

Further information:      

Buchmann Lugano

Via della Posta 2, CH-6900 Lugano

Tuesday to Friday 1 – 6pm, Saturday by appointment