Lawrence Perry: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
10th January, 2025 – 13th February, 2025
LBF Contemporary
13 Tottenham Mews
London, UK
LBF Contemporary is delighted to display They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, an ambitious new body of work by London-based artist Lawrence Perry. A gifted figurative painter, Perry’s works in this series stage meticulously rendered depictions of his coterie of mostly young artists into mythological tableau vivants that are at once extraordinarily realistic yet strange and surreal.
Acrylic on canvas
190 x 130 cm
74.75 x 51.25 in
Drawing on a range of profound and coarse cultural sources—from the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan to the anarchic entertainment of Punch and Judy, and from Virginia Woolf’s time-traveling Orlando to the Biblical story of Judith beheading Holofernes—Perry reimagines familiar and foundational cultural touchstones, transforming them from mere likeness to something entirely new.
While historically facing and fascinated by the ways in which universal fables remain relevant in the most unlikely of circumstances, Perry’s paintings feel intensely contemporary. His incisive attention to the human form simultaneously adopts and ironizes the saturation of constructed images in our age, where sexual desire and the threat of violence simmer below the surface.
Formerly a fashion model and creative collaborator with Alessandro Michele’s Gucci, Perry featured in highly aestheticized projects which, in their drama and palette, often married the opulence of the High Italian Renaissance with the excesses of 70s California. In this exhibition, Perry successfully fuses disparate and uncanny worlds with sumptuous textures and shimmering surfaces.
Acrylic on canvas
190 x 150 cm
74 ¾ x 59 in
Excitingly, the exhibition will also feature a major large-format group portrait, including depictions of Perry’s friend and fellow artist Shaqúelle Whyte. The eponymous painting, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, represents the moment of exhaustion and catharsis after dancing mania—a social phenomenon between the 14th and 17th centuries where people danced erratically for hours or days, believed to be under a curse by a Catholic saint or the influence of hallucinogenic bread. More recently, it recalls the 1930s Great Depression-era dancing craze, where the unemployed and destitute were forced to dance for their livelihoods in humiliating spectacles.
Ambitious, visceral, and at once historical and contemporary, this monumental work stands as the high-water mark of Perry’s singular aesthetic.
About Lawrence Perry
Lawrence Perry (b.1999, Singapore) graduated from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2021. The London-based artist paints uncanny scenes loaded with a psychological charge and heavy dose of wit. Drawing from film, mythology, literature and fashion, Perry create scenes that feel familiar yet surreal, interacting with the emotional states of the figures that populate them. Each painting is packed with subtle nuance and contradiction, leading to an uneasy environment in which the viewer is invited to question the psychological states of his characters or the authenticity of their narrative. Highlights of recent exhibitions include ‘After the Past’ at /THE PLATFORM, Antwerp, 2023 (Solo); ‘Don’t Tell The Boys’ at /THE PLATFORM, Antwerp, 2022 (Solo); The Bomb Factory Residents Show, The Bomb Factory Covent Gardens, London (Group). Lawrence first came to the public eye in 2016 when his work as an in-house artist for an anti-Brexit lobbyist group was picked up by British GQ. The artist has been noted by Hunger magazine as “one of the most promising artists of the moment” with his work since featuring in Alessandro Michele’s A/W 2020 campaign for Gucci, ‘Gucci, The Ritual.’
Lawrence Perry: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? opens on the 10th of January, 2025 until the 13th of February, 2025 at LBF Contemporary
©2024 LBF Contemporary, Lawrence Perry
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