Michael Fullerton

‘How can man take pleasure in nonsense? For one can say, indeed, that almost everywhere there is happiness there is pleasure in nonsense. The overturning of experience into its opposite, to the purposive into the purposeless, of the necessary into the arbitrary, but in such a way that this event causes no harm and is imagined as occasioned by high spirits, delights us, for it momentarily liberates us from the constraint of the necessary, the purposive and that which corresponds to our experience which we usually see as our inexorable masters; we play and laugh when the expected (which usually makes us fearful and tense) discharges itself harmlessly.’

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All to Human (1878)

Carl Freedman Gallery is pleased to present ‘Pleasure in Nonsense’, Michael Fullerton’s second show at the gallery. For the exhibition Fullerton has painted a number of portraits, including Vidal Sassoon (seminal hairdresser), Wendy Deng (wife of Rupert Murdoch), Rachel Short (Relate counsellor), Judith Miller (former New York Times journalist involved in the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame), and Dr Murray Bowen (post-Freudian psychological pioneer of family relationship therapy). Alongside these portraits hangs a triangular composition of three flower paintings. This is mirrored by a wall-mounted, triangular composition of three cuboid sculptures fabricated from urethane and ferric oxide (the raw materials used in the manufacture of audio and video tape). The exhibition also includes a screen print of a tabloid agony aunt photo-story, and a wall text concerning relationship dysfunctions, their symptoms and possible therapeutic strategies.

Michael Fullerton (b.1971, Bellshill, Scotland) studied at Glasgow School of Art and graduated from the MA Programme in 2002. He has recently had solo shows ‘Get Over Yourself’ at Greene Naftali, New York, 2006 and at ‘ART NOW’, Tate Britain, London, 2005, and exhibited work in ‘Stay Forever and Ever’ at South London Gallery, 2007. He lives and works in London.