Stuart Shave/Modern Art is pleased to present a new exhibition of work by Tim Gardner. This exhibition is Gardner’s third solo show with Modern Art, and will be his first exhibition in London for three years- since his solo show at the National Gallery in 2007.

Tim Gardner’s intimately scaled photo-realistic watercolours describe an intense air of naturalistic ease. His paintings unerringly and precisely communicate a deeply felt sense of distinctly ‘middle’ America. Gardner steadily maintains a careful and sincere approach to landscape and figuration. He has sensitivity for his chosen medium that betrays a personal and emotional connection to his subject matter - expressing an emotive condition from the perspective of one who belongs to the world recorded and communicated in his work.

The paintings in this show offer profoundly innocent vignettes, painted from photographs taken by the artist during years spent living in Los Angeles and on Vancouver Island. These paintings describe unremarkable lives seen within landscape, lives subconsciously resigned to the steadfast encroachment of their built environment upon hitherto natural wilderness. Gardner’s paintings focus on the middle-distance: a space where his subject becomes at-once a candid meditation on suburban lifestyle and a situational awareness of the effects of the ongoing inhabitation of landscape. The tensions in Gardner’s work are of the awareness of slight conditions: ease and unease, desperation and longing, complacency and discontent.

Tim Gardner was born in Iowa City, USA in 1973, and lives and works in Black Creek, Canada. Gardner graduated MFA from Columbia University, New York, USA (1999), and BFA from the University of Manitoba, Manitoba, Canada (1996). Recent solo museum exhibitions include Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2009); the National Gallery, London (2007); and Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, USA (2005).Tim Gardner’s work has been included in museum shows Attention to Detail, Flag Art Foundation, New York, USA (2008), New Work: Tim Gardner, Marcelino Goncalves, Zak Smith, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA (2006); Will Boys Be Boys? Questioning Masculinity in Contemporary Art, curated by Shamim Momin, The Salina Art Center, Salina, USA touring to Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, USA, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, USA and Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, USA (2005); Painting On The Move, curated by Peter Pakesch, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2002); and Here is There 2, Secession, Vienna, Austria (2002).

For further information please contact Ryan Moore at Stuart Shave/Modern Art: ryan@modernart.net

Press contact: Rhiannon Pickles at Rhiannon Pickles PR: rhiannonpickles@mac.com