Justin Mortimer - Hoax

Published to coincide with a solo presentation of the new 'Hoax Suite' by British painter Justin Mortimer at The Armory Show in New York in spring 2018 with London-based gallery Parafin, the publication presents the thirty works that comprise this exceptional series of paintings depicting dead and dying flowers, offering an intense and accomplished exposition of still life, or perhaps more aptly, nature morte. From one direction, pure abstraction threatens to rupture into physical space and matter; from the other, figuration almost collapses into the abstraction that engulfs it. With Mortimer's characteristic combination of darkness and beauty, melancholy and metaphysics, observation and interpretation, the 'Hoax' series is not only a significant body of work within the artist's oeuvre, but perhaps also one of the most significant series of paintings of flowers in our time.00Exhibition: Parafin Gallery at The Armory Show, Piers 92 & 94, New York, USA (06.-10.03.2018).