3 Wishes, 2007
Oil and gloss on MDF
Original size: 100 x 90 cm

Photographer: Michael Franke

Alexis Harding lives and works in London. Using eccentric devices to make his work, Harding pours household gloss paint over a monochrome of oil paint. During the long drying process, that can last for months, the surface changes and is manipulated. Gravity, extreme force and painterly chemical reaction work together alongside the artist's intervention to make works that aim to split, break and reinvigorate the possibilities of abstract painting.

He says of his work "I use the ordinary language of abstraction and aim to fundamentally change it; to stretch it to breaking point so another image emerges. To do this I have had to change the way paint normally behaves and functions. A combination of strategy and control, irrationality, chance and abandonment is at work in making the paintings. The paintings are abstract and bodily and entropic".

Selected solo exhibitions include: Alexis Harding In Progress: Nunnery Gallery, London, 2013; Fill Line, Platform A Gallery, Middlesborough, 2012; Long Room Drying Depot, Two Rooms Gallery, New Zealand, 2012; Substance and Accident, Mummery + Schnelle, London, 2012; Tondos and Bi-Products, Rubicon Gallery, Dublin, 2011; Clockwise Stoppages, Gallerie Hollenbach, Stuttgart, 2011; Bi-product Depositories, Mummery + Schnelle, London, 2009; Broken Lines, Galleria Marabini, Milan, 2009.

Recent Group Exhibitions include: Colour: Move! Galerie Renate Bender, Munich, 2014; L.A-London, Mind the Gap, Autonomie Gallery, L.A, 2014; Painting Two: Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand, 2013.

Harding’s work is held in numerous public and private collections.