Ed Templeton strikes again in Belgium
Spring is back on the continent, and Ed Templeton is celebrating it with a bang. His new solo show "Strange New Feelings" opened up last night in Antwerp and a huge crowd turned up to take a look at his newest works and get something, anything autographed (t-shirts, his newest book "Deformer", arm casts,...) by the pro skateboarder turned artist...
Templeton's been documenting his life and the people he crosses for a long time now. Puberty, sexuality, drugs - they're all part of growing up and extremely fascinating to those who already have but never meant to. As we get older ourselves, the kids around us just seem to get younger, and in the portraits the artist takes on skateboard tours and art travels he captures just that. Additional tourist snapshots, nude portraits, and of course his own doodles and text scrawled right over them finishes off the good old Templeton style, safe and sound.
On the parallel side of his character artwork, I would love to someday see more of them like his forest tryptich (see below). The visual language the artist uses in that single piece is more powerful than the rest of the paintings combined. It's a new means of exploring his own boundaries, testing, growing. After all, evolution can only be induced by adding new elements to the mix, and dimensionality might just be the key to set his flat rendering of illustrative figures free. Go, Ed!
- Eva
Ed Templeton: "Strange New Feelings" at Tim Van Laere Gallery, Verlatstraat 23/25, Antwerp, Belgium. Open Tue > Sat, 14 > 18h until May 2, 2009.
Ed Templeton: "Deformer", 166 pages from Damiani, ISBN 978-8862080507, available from Amazon.
Images courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery
