The work of AA alum, former tutor and internationally recognised photorealist artist, Andrew Holmes, is currently on view in the AA Front Members’ Room. This exhibition brings together 17 drawings to coincide with the publication of the book GAS TANK CITY by Circa Press. Following its opening last week, the exhibition has been featured on CNN Style with an article written by Francesca Perry, titled These hyperreal drawings of trucks look just like photographs – and take up to 500 hours to make. Perry writes:
'Andrew Holmes’ images of trucks on Californian highways are sun-drenched, saturated and sharp. Looking at the crystal clear snapshots, you can almost hear the roar of the engines, feel the heat reflected off shiny aluminum gas tanks, and smell the diesel pumped out of the exhausts. But these are not photographs: each hyperreal image is in fact a color pencil drawing, resulting from between 300 and 500 hours of careful construction.'
For 50 years, Andrew Holmes has pursued the trucks, trailers, tanks and highways of the American West in a series of 100 large scale drawings. The subject is the Interstate Highway system, which is the largest structure in the world measuring at 43,000 miles, and was conceived and designed as a single entity. This is the mobile armature that sustains the artificial oasis of Los Angeles, or rather the lines of transportation that maintain the city across the harsh surrounding desert. The work documents, analyses, and classifies the machines driven by the men and women who ride and maintain this armature. It offers glimpses of the fetishes of blue collar America, the classical Kenworth truck, the baroque curve of the stainless container, and the pearlised gleam of the custom car. The lovingly embellished mass-produced objects become stand-ins for their owners.
Read the CNN Style feature here and click here for further details on the exhibition.
The exhibition is on view until Saturday 7 December in the Front Members’ Room, 36 Bedford Square.
Image: Vernon, Andrew Holmes, 2010.
