Image courtesy of TOPS Gallery
Drawing by Guy Church
If you’ve never been to TOPS Gallery, this Friday is a great time to go. The basement gallery is located beneath the Jack Robinson Gallery and Rainbow Studios in South Main. With white gloss floors and a hole-in-the-wall feel, TOPS is possibly the city’s most beautiful space for showing art. Curator and founder Matt Ducklo displays intimate exhibitions by a rotating cast of nationally and internationally recognized artists.
On Friday, the artist Guy Church — whose work were previously featured at TOPS as a part of the group exhibition, “Voice of the Turtle” — will open a solo exhibition of his ethereal, otherworldly drawings. Church is self-trained and Memphis-based, and though Memphis Brooks Museum of Art recently acquired one of his pieces, you may not be familiar with his work, since the artist rarely shows. Church’s drawings often feature young people in solitude, or involved in domestic activities. In my review of “Voice of the Turtle” for the Memphis Flyer, I assessed Church’s work this way:
“The works that pack the most punch are four expertly stippled drawings by self-taught artist Church, whose genre scenes seem drawn from an otherworldly forest. The characters that inhabit this realm are likewise magical; their exaggerated proportions seeming all too natural in Church's constructions.”
Church, speaking about his work, says, “I like the subject of people and what they do. I pretty much just try to invent a face that looks like the person in the story I have in my mind. I ask myself, ‘What is she thinking about?’ Well that’s kind of up to the viewer, I guess. She’s not a real person. She’s a picture.”
Guy Church, “The Inside Circle,” will be on view from October 23 until December 5, 2015. The opening will be held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. this Friday, October 23.
