Spotlight
Feature HIX Award-winning painter Josh Raz
Championed by Fru Tholstrup
Visual Arts
Above View of Skaters on Tihin Ice, Josh Raz
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Above Josh Raz
Interview
Josh Raz
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Josh Raz
Restaurateur Mark Hix and Rebecca Lidert, director of CNB Gallery, set up the HIX Award in 2013 to give aspiring artists a platform to showcase their work in their first step toward life beyond university. Painter Josh Raz won the £1,000 cash prize, to be used to finance a studio, in 2016, the same year he graduated with a degree in Fine Art from Newcastle University. On the judging panel was London-based art consultant and curator Fru Tholstrup.
Tholstrup says: “I was immediately drawn to Raz’s large, very painterly and ambitious work, which simultaneously blended various styles in a collage-like manner, combining figuration and abstract landscapes. Raz’s painting stood out in the gallery and his ability to articulate boundaries between the real and the artificial spoke volumes for a mesmerising sense of the new, combined with a fresh and dynamic sensibility.”
Inspired by representational painters such as Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Peter Doig and Lucien Freud, Raz depicts figures navigating environments that either contract or dilate. Any ground that figures walk upon is gradually revealed to be laid on precarious foundations. He says: “There’s no real rhyme or reason to how an idea might arrive, yet a new painting will usually adopt characteristics of the paintings that I have made prior to the most recent. This is always done with assistance from collected photographs, screenshots from films and scraps of text I’ve read or written. Despite these materials always constituting the fabric of each new painting, there is also a degree of blind faith involved in an image eventually coalescing.”
Since winning the Hix Award, Josh Raz has been featured in GQ magazine and produced three solo shows: The Atrophy Experience, held at Hix Gallery, London, Hubris and a Whimper, held at Abject Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, and, most recently, Joyride at Bermondsey Project Space, London last year. He has also completed a residency in the mountains of Malaga, Spain.
Tholstrup says: “There were no surprises when Raz unanimously won the prestigious Hix Award. Following the award, myself and respected art dealer Fabien Fryns offered Raz a residency in Spain in a whitewashed chapel in Alcuzcuz in the Andalusian hills. We asked him to engage with the surroundings and let history repeat itself as previously Jean Cocteau, also a guest at Alcuzcuz, had decorated the courtyard with his tiles, which remain today.”
She adds: “Raz continues to create canvases where time and place become fluid and where the paintwork seems luminous yet somehow opaque, merging the imagery found from a range of sources.”
Raz’s work will next be featured in the upcoming issue of ArtMaze Magazine before being presented in several London-based exhibitions later this year, which are currently being finalised.
Inspired by representational painters such as Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Peter Doig and Lucien Freud, Raz depicts figures navigating environments that either contract or dilate. Any ground that figures walk upon is gradually revealed to be laid on precarious foundations. He says: “There’s no real rhyme or reason to how an idea might arrive, yet a new painting will usually adopt characteristics of the paintings that I have made prior to the most recent. This is always done with assistance from collected photographs, screenshots from films and scraps of text I’ve read or written. Despite these materials always constituting the fabric of each new painting, there is also a degree of blind faith involved in an image eventually coalescing.”
Since winning the Hix Award, Josh Raz has been featured in GQ magazine and produced three solo shows: The Atrophy Experience, held at Hix Gallery, London, Hubris and a Whimper, held at Abject Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, and, most recently, Joyride at Bermondsey Project Space, London last year. He has also completed a residency in the mountains of Malaga, Spain.
Tholstrup says: “There were no surprises when Raz unanimously won the prestigious Hix Award. Following the award, myself and respected art dealer Fabien Fryns offered Raz a residency in Spain in a whitewashed chapel in Alcuzcuz in the Andalusian hills. We asked him to engage with the surroundings and let history repeat itself as previously Jean Cocteau, also a guest at Alcuzcuz, had decorated the courtyard with his tiles, which remain today.”
She adds: “Raz continues to create canvases where time and place become fluid and where the paintwork seems luminous yet somehow opaque, merging the imagery found from a range of sources.”
Raz’s work will next be featured in the upcoming issue of ArtMaze Magazine before being presented in several London-based exhibitions later this year, which are currently being finalised.
About the champion
Fru Tholstrup is perhaps best known for her role launching Sotheby’s flagship London art gallery, S|2, and as director of London’s Haunch of Venison gallery – where she was behind a stellar list of exhibitions by artists including Damien Hirst, Michael Joo and Frank Stella. Her reputation for building museum-quality art collections also saw her work with Jonathan Yeo to curate the Soho House Art Collection for chief executive Nick Jones in 2010.
“There were no surprises when Raz unanimously won the prestigious Hix Award.”
Above Josh Raz
Above Joyride, Josh Raz
Above The Beat and The Heartbeat, Josh Raz
Above Josh Raz
Above Joyride, Josh Raz
Above The Beat and The Heartbeat, Josh Raz
