Writer: Hamish Strudwick
Now on at Lbf Contemporary:
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
A presentation of works by Lawrence Perry
10 January – 12 February
With They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, LBF Contemporary continues its streak of showcasing young artists with remarkable flair. This latest exhibition features a painter whose wit, literary charm, and technical mastery create a compelling visual language. Perry’s work dazzles with its theatricality, each canvas alive with finely staged gestures, rich textures, and exquisitely rendered details. The luminous precision of his brushwork is particularly evident in the textures of fabric and the nuanced warmth of his subjects’ skin, revealing an artist who understands both the grandeur and intimacy of paint.
Perry’s canvases present a series of self-contained narratives, each charged with an enigmatic sense of action and intention. A young man, clad in olive britches and a dark amethyst-blue embroidered jacket, sits cross-legged, peacock feather quill in hand, poised in pensive thought. A girl in white gleefully extends a lifeless swan by the neck, kicking one stockinged foot behind her. Elsewhere, a figure adorned with a small red star-shaped tattoo clutches a handful of jewel-toned cherries, a single fruit slipping through their fingers. In the exhibition’s larger composition, seven figures—arranged in three pairs and one solitary form—stand in various states of quiet grief and despondency, locked in silent embraces.
It is impossible to view these paintings as anything but scenes, or tableaux, so deliberate is their composition. The evocative expressions, dramatic spotlighting, and compressed staging propel them into the realm of the theatrical. One might feel as though they have stumbled into a play already in progress, searching for the missing prologue. Yet, unlike ancient theatre, where a chorus would interject with narrative clarity, Perry offers no such resolution. Instead, the works leave us suspended in mystery, caught between what is shown and what is left untold.
Perry draws on a deep well of historical imagery—Judith and Holofernes, Leda and the Swan, Adam and Eve, and the Commedia dell’Arte—yet his approach is far from merely referential. By distilling these age-old narratives into contemporary, intimate moments, he seamlessly fuses the classical with the present, reanimating these myths with a distinctly modern theatricality. His figures, though steeped in history, feel immediate and familiar, embodying the timelessness of human drama.
Lawrence Perry (b.1999, Singapore) graduated from the Slade School of Art in 2021, specializing in painting. And in Perry’s hands, painting is not just a craft but a performance of its own.