Random Celebrity'One of the great pleasures of being a dealer in contemporary art is the close contact one makes with the artists. I have had the privilege in a long career of meeting and working with some extraordinary people. I have noticed that painters can be roughly divided into two groups. The first, and by far the largest, consists of artists who find their style or metier and slowly and methodically develop over the years. The second and smallest group is those artists who fizz with ideas and concepts like a shaken can of cola.
All too often these painters, to continue the metaphor, all gas and no substance but occasionally someone like Alex Hamilton happens. This is my sixth one man show of Hamilton's and I am always astonished at the direction he takes and the obsessive nature of his research and collection of source material. He combines this with a meticulous technique to create haunting and lovely paintings that celebrate that part of the human psyche that seeks through dance, story telling, food, ritual or mechanical invention to transcend the corporeal and attain the ineffable.'
Trent Read
Look out for his forthcoming exhibition, Collected Celebrity, opening on 19 February 2010.
View Alex's work at : http://www.finearts.co.za
