Vicken Parsons

Vicken Parsons is the artist's first retrospective monograph, a 296-page publication featuring works from throughout her career.

Parsons makes small, intimate paintings using thin layers of oil paint on thick plywood panel. Central for Parsons is that the paintings convey a much larger sense of scale and space than their small size might initially suggest. In some works, space is shaped and defined by lines and structures that recall architectural elements, while in others Parsons uses paint to veil or shadow interiors that can be glimpsed beneath.

Dozens of her most celebrated paintings are illustrated, alongside some of her drawings, until now never shown, and her ‘painted objects’, in which she extends her pictorial investigation of space, reflection, and illusion into three-dimensional form.

Parsons’ work has inspired writers from the fields of art, literature, and psychoanalysis for several decades. Their responses to her ‘visual poems’ are gathered here for the first time in this collection of writings on her practice.

Foreword by Andrew Nairne
Conversation with David Batchelor
Texts by Michael Archer, Iwona Blazwick, Darian Leader, Richard Morphet, Anna Moszynska, Annushka Shani, Rachel Spence, Edmund de Waal

Publisher: Art/Books in association with Cristea Roberts Gallery
Published 2024