By stripping back photographs of complex urban structures, Richard Galpin reveals fragmented forms in dynamic spatial compositions. Each work is a single photographic print that has been meticulously scored and peeled to remove certain areas of the surface emulsion. Interplay between the angular abstractions of the stripped white paper, and the pristine surface of the remaining photograph, results in a dazzling reconfiguration of space. Through this reductive process, new forms emerge.
Galpin engages with the formal aspects of early modernist abstraction, Constructivism and Futurism, while also working with and against the forms within his original photographs. Inescapably bound to the present, the surface detail delivers traces of contemporary urban experience. However any reading of these works as a representation of an existing place and time is confounded by the artist’s radical revision of the image.

Richard Galpin has had solo exhibitions at Hales Gallery (London) and Galeria Leme (Sao Paulo). His work has been selected for a variety of survey shows that investigate alternative uses of photography such as: Attack:Attraction, Painting/Photography at the Marcel Sitcoske Gallery (San Francisco), The Photograph in Question at Von Lintel Gallery (New York), and Looking With/Out at the Courthauld Institute of Art (London). He was recently selected by the magazine Art Review as one of the art world’s top One Hundred Emerging Artists.