About the work

Kelly Chorpening's drawing An Old Master relates to a series created for a recent exhibition at Horatio Jr. A Union of Voices where artists’ created books. The drawing relates to the Horatio Jr. book containing a series of drawings depicting the backs of old master paintings, that reveal evidence of their provenance or conservation. This interest in the backs of paintings, in a roundabout way, derives from an intriguing detail in Giotto’s Franciscan Cycle in Assisi (1297-1300) where a cross is depicted from behind. It’s a slim object where one side is meaningful and important, but what we see is surprisingly mundane.

Date and country of birth

1970, US

About the artist

Born Baytown, Kelly Chorpening lives and works in London. Graduated from BFA Cleveland Institute of Art (1993), and MFA Hunter College and City University of New York (1995).

In her drawings, the distinction between object and image is often blurred by presenting them sculpturally. As objects, they teeter on the edge of preservation or destruction due to their overall design: paper mounted to industrially cut and rolled steel. The drawings defy gravity as unprotected drawn surface thrust into social space, and this tension between vulnerability and strength is furthered by the depiction of processes of aging and neglect upon a given subject. Drawing the appearance of these forces becomes a means of addressing the status of these objects, both physically and culturally, and finding expression for precarious conditions in life more generally.

Selected exhibitions include A History of Drawing, Camberwell Space, London (2018); Immaterial Statements, Horatio Jr., London (2016); Between Thought and Space, Dilston Grove, London (2015); Vertigo Before Words, Salon am Hof, Vienna (2007); Suspended Animation, Shillam Smith, London (2006).

Awards and residencies include Jerwood Drawing Prize (2016); Derwent Art Prize (2016, 2014); Phantom Limn, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh (2017); and Punk and Sheep, Canary Wharf, London (2014).