Private View: ‘Legacy & Disorder’ by Jake Wood-Evans

This May, we present a new solo exhibition by British artist, Jake Wood-Evans. Legacy & Disorder centers around Wood-Evan’s fascination with combining the past and present. The artist’s large-scale oil paintings and drawings convey an altered atmosphere and re-appropriated view of 18th-century subjects, including; portraiture, seascapes and figurative compositions.

Jake in conversation with guests

The painterly works draw on the legacies of Old Masters through a layer of abstraction, depicting familiar, yet obscured content matter – updated for the digital age. Taking influence from the work of John Constable, J.M.W Turner, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer and George Stubbs, among others, Wood-Evans’ next generation painting style retains recognisable elements that allude to the conventions of art history. Wood-Evans’ ethereal, unsettling pictures evoke a haunting beauty; as the artist describes, his work is ‘a process of conflict with the ambiguous space between representation and abstraction.’

A guest admiring one of Jake Wood-Evans’ monumental paintings

The Private View, which took place on Thursday 23 May,  was an emotive and celebratory occasion, perfectly complementing the atmosphere created in Jake Wood Evans’ works. The event was attended by over 700 guests, who filled the gallery space with stimulating conversation while admiring Wood-Evans’ latest works and enjoying delicious Whiskey cocktails provided by Highland Park.

Guests taking a photo in front of Jake Wood-Evans’ beautiful paintings

Legacy & Disorder is on show at Unit London Mayfair until 15 June 2019. The images from the evening are accessible here.