Eye For A Sty, Tooth For The Roof (Signed)

Kingsley Ifill
Eye For A Sty, Tooth For The Roof (Signed)

Photographs: Kingsley Ifill

Text: Lorraine Nicholson

Publisher: Tarmac Press

156 pages

Year: 2020

Price: 55 €

Comments: Printed cloth hardback with foilblocking, 25 x 20cm.Designed by Kingsley Ifill & Jamie Reid. Signed by Kingsley Ifill

Eye For A Sty, Tooth For The Roof is composed of a collaborative series of figurative studies by Fox and Ifill, produced in Los Angeles during a four month period, beginning in October 2019. Initially intended simply to extend the conversation that has been taking place between the mediums of drawing and photography since the late 19th century, this publication ultimately explores the love, trust, and honesty that can still be shared amongst artist and subject, despite the negativity and confusion that permeates the surrounding world.

The works in Eye For A Sty, Tooth For The Roof served as the source material from which Danny Fox based his series of paintings included in his current solo show at Alexander Berggruen Danny Fox: The Sweet and Burning Hills (January 12-February 26, 2021).

In Fox’s own words: “I have always used photographs as source material for figurative painting. In recent years the iPhone has been a well used tool, but I’ve always liked to look back to early Parisian studio photography, predominantly from the late 1800s. The erotic photographers of their day referenced classical paintings for the model poses, then the painters working at this time would buy these images in the form of early pornographic postcards and use them as painting and drawing reference, completing a feed back loop of visual reference. I decided that I wanted to create my own source material inspired by these images, so I worked with long time collaborator Kingsley Ifill on a book called Eye For A Sty, Tooth For The Roof. The book encapsulates the winter of 2019 in Beachwood Canyon. The paintings in [Danny Fox: The Sweet and Burning Hills (January 12-February 26, 2021)] derive from those images, figuratively speaking.”