Andrew Grassie
Giraffe, 2020
Tempera on paper on board
14,8 x 18,8 cm (image)
31,1 x 35,2 x 3 cm (framed)

Giraffe is from a new body of work exploring images from the artist’s image archive, among them decades old snapshots associated with personal memories, tied to a specific place, a moment in time. Andrew Grassie chose motifs that had held his attention for reasons he could not always explain: photos from his image archive, sometimes many decades old and exuding a vague awkwardness, became sources for these works.

"The photograph [the Giraffe work is based on] was taken about ten years ago in a zoo/safari park in Normandy, France. A small train took you on a tour round the grounds. You were separated from the animals by a tall fence. This giraffe came over to the train and stood quite still. The sky was almost totally white creating a neutral backdrop objectifying the creature. Retrospectively, I realise there is a scene with a taxidermied giraffe in Chris Marker’s film La Jetée (1962). A film I have referenced for its cinematic narrative made up from photographic stills as well as for its looping character."

– Andrew Grassie

The intimately scaled, precisely painted work is executed in tempera, a painting technique associated with pre-Renaissance panel paintings anteceding the development of oil paint.

Esther Schipper is pleased to launch its first Virtual Room dedicated to Still Frame, Andrew Grassie's solo exhibition that took place at the gallery from November 1–28, 2020.

The Virtual Room presents a highly rendered visualization of our exhibition space in which visitors can freely move around the room and discover each painting in detail.

Still Frame includes 24 paintings. Both title and number of paintings obliquely acknowledge the conceptual affinity to cinematic storytelling that informs the new body of work: 24 frames per second is the standard ratio in film to create the illusion of seamless movement in human vision.

Known for small, precisely painted works—their ostensibly unassuming matter-of-factness sometimes masking the often elaborately staged preparation of past projects and their conceptual ambition—with Still Frame Andrew Grassie continues longstanding interests into the status of the image, the nature of memory and contemporary painting.