IAN RAYER-SMITH: CHELSEA CROSS ART SAFARI 2018

Article: Christopher George

For the third edition of their yearly Art Safari, running from 18 June to 7 July, the Chelsea Cross have invited artist Ian Rayer-Smith to exhibit a series of 20 new abstract paintings, each one displayed within a different luxury showroom on the cross of Fulham Road and Old Church Street.

For this very sepecial show, Ian Rayer-Smith has created 20 large scale expressive abstract paintings exploring the ideas around landscape that are void of time and place. The artist's original intent was to create a range of artworks that projected a lively and energetic approach to painting, thus creating unfamiliar, new worlds.
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Strongly influenced by the work of the abstract expressionists but also by the romantic light of the Old Masters, Ian Rayer-Smith’s paintings effortlessly fuse abstraction with the figurative and the surreal.

Using classical references, he manipulates and transforms them until they lose their initial context and produce new meaning, ultimately revealing the physicality and sensory nature of the materials.

“In a world preoccupied with technology, there is something remarkable about painting. It connects us back to man’s earliest and most elemental forms of self expression. I want my work to exude a raw human energy and I like the brutal act of mark making to be evident on the surface”  Ian Rayer-Smith
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The Chelsea Cross Art Safari takes place from 18 June to 7 July at various venues between 84 and 265 Fulham Road, Chelsea SW3 6HY

Ian Rayer-Smith