' D.I.Y.' by Richard Woods

29 April – 1 June '13

The Alan Cristea Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of works by Richard Woods from 29 April – 1 June 2013 at 34 Cork Street. The exhibition will feature a site-specific installation in which Woods will clad the gallery space from floor to ceiling. This large-scale installation will show alongside two new series of editions, his renowned Woodblock Inlays series as well as a group of new sculptures, all combining to create a homogenous environment.

The work of Richard Woods traverses the boundaries between art, architecture and design in an on-going examination of the relationship between the functional and the ornamental. The everyday surfaces that surround us provide the canvas onto which the artist transposes elements from the vernacular of traditional urban design.

His architectural interventions toy with perception and reality, manipulating and transforming the facades and interiors of existing structures through the application of synthetic fronts or 'logos': galleries become mock-Tudor houses, City Hall security booths red brick-castles, and cloistered Venetian courtyards crazy-paved suburban patios.

His simplified, stylised facades poke fun at our aesthetic values, both mocking and paying homage to the cult of renovation and DIY. His distilled encasements impose new values on the buildings they occupy, contrasting the urban with the rural, the old with the new, and the congested with the minimal. Each installation challenges us to confront the way in which we construct our surroundings, and probes the irrevocable artificiality of our local environment.

Woodblock Inlay 2, 2011 Woodcut on Bread and Butter 270 gsm paper Paper 103.0 x 71.5 cm, Image 91.3 x 60.7 cm Edition of 30, © Richard Woods. Courtesy Alan Cristea Gallery

Stone Clad Cottage (Sarvisalo), 2011 Zabludowicz Collection, Sarvisalo Photo credit - David Bebber Courtesy of Richard Woods Studio

Seoul Tudor, 2011 Commissioned by SUUM Project for Hamon Korea Courtesy of Richard Woods Studio

Logo no. 77, 2011 Private Collection, London Courtesy of Richard Woods Studio