WILLIAM STEIN

William Stein’s practice comprises the spoken and written word as well as the painted object. Intuitive mark-making - not just drawn but also scratched, stippled and stencilled - has seen the artist develop a highly distinctive language of shapes, spheres, line and texture. Working on poured plaster as opposed to canvas or panel, he disrupts our expectations of what a painting should - or could - be.

Born in Bristol in 1977, William lives and works in London. He completed a MA at the Slade in which he achieved a Distinction and has since been made an Honorary Research Associate. He has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad, most recently with David Krut Projects in New York.

“I have no desire to illustrate the seen world, neither to illustrate an idea or a concept. Rather the work is to be sensed, to be felt, not analysed and understood. I want to guide the viewer into a space, somewhere liminal, somewhere to be explored, and it should sit aside from the known … the motifs are only personal in that I have formed them, I have made them just enough of something so they may act as a vessel to others, and indeed they soon enough are anyone’s, they become personal to all who care to take them on.”

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My Heart. Red. Bloody. Thumpy. (May-Jun 2015)