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1. Peter Harrap

WHEN I HAVE FEARS183 x132cm, Belton Molotow spray paint and oil on canvas 2007

2. Peter Harrap

WANNABE 1 130 x 91 cm gold leaf, acrylic spray and oil on canvas 2008

3. Natasha Kissell

CEDARSoil on canvas 122 x107cm 2007

4. Natasha Kissell

DEEP DARK AND BEAUTIFULoil on canvas 107x122 cm 2007

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Kissell also borrows and steals from diverse sources. The sublimity of Caspar David Friedrich is crossed with an almost UFO looking building shrouded in smoke in ‘The Magic Hour’ and ‘The Twilight Hour’. In ‘Hurricane’, a vast unending landscape of pastoral bliss is disrupted by the violent curve of a highway and the fantastical flying objects that stream across it - cows, plastic spades and brightly coloured Lego. If you are hoping to find meaning you may be disappointed. As with Dadaism, this is a game enacted on the canvas which is at once a real pictorial space and also an unintelligible flat surface. Previously Kissell has juxtaposed bucolic landscapes with harsh angled modernist buildings such as in ‘Cedars’, right, and the gothic realm of German Romanticism with the depiction of leisure and technology combined in neon lit ski slopes, see ‘Deep and Dark and Beautiful’, right. ‘Mash Up’ breaks down the hierarchical structures of art history, refusing to fit neatly in a definable niche. The glib and playful attitude and sacrilegious approach brings a refreshing outlook on all the culture we knowingly and sublimely absorb everyday. Without a central subject, there is the inevitability of uncertainty, the implication of which is that we are beyond comprehension. Hans Alf

‘Mash Up’ presents the work of two contemporary London based painters, Peter Harrap and Natasha Kissell. Although distinctly different, Harrap and Kissell have found a shared interest in re-mixing signs and signifiers from a plethora of sources. Old master paintings are spliced with rock posters, rolling English landscapes with sci-fi pulp imagery. These two artists share an irreverent viewpoint on the world, not afraid to muddle the linear discourse of art history. Peter Harrap has produced a series of paintings, each crossing disparate references to create conundrums of existence. Iconic elements of culture are brought together in a web of free association. By referring both to the greats of art history such as Velasquez and Ingres and to the graphics of Jimi Hendrix posters and Marilyn Monroe repros as well as the mass production of chintzy mantelpiece trinkets and technology in the form of iPods and games consoles, he encompasses the variety of human experience, intensely learned and youthfully pop. ‘Leda: Change Comes in So Many Forms’ jumbles the high culture of myths and Michelangelo’s ‘Leda and the Swan’ as represented in the framed picture on the wall with the low culture of the Led Zeppelin ‘Swan Song’ poster. The banality of a box of ‘Swan’ brand matches is invoked to play the game. The languorous figure on the sofa appears to be preyed upon by the swan on the television screen, perhaps mirroring the story of the great Greek myth, but perhaps not. These are only tantalising games played by Harrap, the puppeteer able to pull the right strings to set off meaning, and yet so inconclusive as to leave us puzzled. There is no finite answer. In previous bodies of work Harrap has mashed up graffiti art with portraiture, see ‘When I have fears’, left, and religious iconography with the representation of youth culture, see ‘Wannabe 1’, right.

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Peter Harrap

JUNE: HISTORY IS A CONSTRUCT BUT

CONSTRUCTS SOUND SO UN-PASSIONATE81x 100 cm oil on canvas 2009

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Peter Harrap

VALPINCON: BEING OBSERVED IS

PROBLEMATIC IN A POST

PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY112 x 127 cm oil on canvas 2009

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Peter Harrap

VENUS : FEMINISM IS AN UNDENIABLE TRUTH

YET THERE IS STILL THE PULL TO

ROMANTIC LOVE107 x 122 cm oil on canvas 2009

Peter Harrap

LEDA: CHANGE COMES IN SO MANY FORMS71 x 81 cm oil on canvas 2009

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Natasha Kissell

HURRICANE147 x 183 cm oil on canvas 2009

Natasha Kissell

CABIN OF CURIOUSITIES79 x 99 cm oil on canvas 2009

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Natasha Kissell

TWILIGHT HOUR72 x 82 cm oil on canvas 2009

Natasha Kissell

INDIAN LAKE122 x 107 cm oil on canvas 2009

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Natasha Kissell

SILVER SWAN122 x 107 cm oil on canvas 2009

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Born 1975 Lives and works in London and Brighton EDUCATION

2004 Elected to Royal Academy Schools RASA

1993-1996 Winchester School of Art

1992-1993 Camberwell College of Art SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2002 Basingstoke Arts Centre Southern Arts/ Arts Council

1999 Leighton House Museum

SELECTED GROUP EXBITIONS

2010 British Council Royal Academy with Gabriel Coxhead

2007 PLAY at the Bearspace Gallery, London

2006 Haywood Touring , London, Berlin, Barcelona

2005 RAdical Art, Jerwood Space, London

2003 Stranger Than Fiction, Space Gallery London

1995 Dulwich Picture Gallery with sculptorMichael Kenny RA

Born in 1978, lives and works in London

EDUCATION

2000 - 2003 Royal Academy Schools - Fine Art Postgraduate Studies

1997 - 2000 Byam Shaw School of Art - BA Fine Art

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2008 The Hours, Eleven, London

2006 10G, New York

2004 Magical Worlds, Eleven, London

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2008 Romanticism Interrupted, Mumbai, India

2008 Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, USA

2006 ART Futures, Bloomberg Space, London

2005 RAdical Art, Jerwood Space, London

2003 Stranger Than Fiction, Space Gallery London

2002 The Sackler Gallery, Royal Academy of Art, London

Peter Harrap Natasha Kissell

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HANS ALF GALLERYFlæsketorvet 26-28 | 1711 København VP: +45 33162232 |C: +45 20922911hans@hansalf.com | www.hansalf.com