Galerie Fabian Lang presents in London:

ISABELLE YOUNG

STills

29 June 2023 - 30 July 2023

Galerie Fabian Lang and the artist Isabelle Young have transformed the top floor of a Victorian building in Wardour Street, Soho, London into a temporary exhibition space to showcase Young’s latest series Stills.

EXHIBITED WORKS:

artist talk:

PRESS RELEASE
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Galerie Fabian Lang presents Isabelle Young: Stills, the British artist’s first solo exhibition in London. This new photographic series by Young - a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art - unites her keen eye for architectural details with the cinematic world at a temporary exhibition space in London’s Soho. Primarily focusing on Italian architecture, the works are rooted in neorealist cinema. Following the first and second world wars, Italian film directors such as Federico Fellini and Roberto Rossellini famously cast from the street as every face had a story to tell. Young casts buildings who hold such stories: there are no people or characters present but a sense that they have only just departed. Unlike a set, these locations were not built to fit an audience’s perspective yet retain a sense of ambiguity.

“I am always drawn to the flatness of architectural elements which are so reduced that they could be mere plasterboard surrounded by green screens and lighting rigs. I am fascinated by the moment just before a stage or cinematic set falls away at its edges, and the viewer must suspend their disbelief.”

The works follow the same line of thought as Young's earlier series "California artifice", which explored the Beaux-Arts style in Californian architecture and Hollywood. The artifice of antiquity so prevalent in American architecture is dramatically juxtaposed with European architecture’s inherent, rather than imposed, history. Whereas so much of American architecture is related to the re-construction of a reality or an image, in Europe you can barely escape history. With a refined effortlessness, Young frames settings that have a supposed history or events within them, in a way where construction and actuality go hand in hand.

The exhibition now symbolically closes the circle by being located in Wardour Street, Soho, which has been a central location in the film industry for over a hundred years. The Victorian building was previously home to Rosy Wilde gallery run by British artist Stella Vine in 2006 and is today also home to cutting rooms run by BAFTA-nominated film directors Jacqui and David Morris (McCullin, 2012; Attacking The Devil, 2014; Nureyev, 2018; A Christmas Carol, 2020).

Location
Floor 4, 79 Wardour Street, London W1D 6QB, Entrance on Tisbury Court

Opening hours
Friday, 12-6pm
Saturday and Sunday, 12-6pm and by appointment

For press or sales inquiries please contact Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.