Daniel Crews-Chubb – Out of Chaos

Highlights Daniel Crews-Chubb’s mixed-media paintings that explore the human condition through figuration, abstraction, and diverse cultural references.

Daniel Crews-Chubb (b.1984) is a London-based painter whose mixed-media works wrestle with the human condition and modes of self-expression. This monograph, Out of Chaos, is published to coincide with his solo exhibition at Timothy Taylor, New York, which brings together new paintings and works on paper.

Crews-Chubb’s paintings exist somewhere between figuration and abstraction. They draw on a wide variety of references, including ancient cosmologies, historic artefacts, and sculpture, pre-Columbian deities, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and Hellenic myth. He intertwines canonical sources and classical allusions in his paintings, creating a highly personal, idiosyncratic lexicon of human, celestial, and bestial figures.

Out of Chaos takes its title from the ancient Greek notion that chaos is a state of undifferentiated matter from which the universe emerged. The paintings that form this series feature urgent, gestural marks and passages of vivid color, centred around the figure as a motif. The bodies that he depicts are ageless, non-gendered, and non-racial–– conduits for feeling, rather than signifiers of individuals.

This publication reproduces a selection of Crews-Chubb’s paintings from 2015 to 2024, starting with his early works and subsequently organised into seven series. Notable among these are the recent Immortals (2022–) and Out of Chaos, which is the focal point of his solo exhibition. The book also features an introduction by the writer Jennifer Higgie, an essay by art historian Matthew Holman, and an interview with writer Amah-Rose Abrams.

Higgie considers Crews-Chubb’s exploration of the human condition and the role of spirituality in it. In his essay "Death, the World and All Our Woe", Holman expands on the artist’s references to myth and religion, describing him as a "creator who annihilates". Holman contextualises Crews-Chubb in an art-historical lineage, considering his work alongside that of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Willem de Kooning. In an in-depth interview, Crews-Chubb and Abrams delve into the artist’s time at art college, the development of his painting technique and the relationship between the past and present in his work.

The book is edited by Matt Price and Lada Sorokopud, designed by Import/Export, and published by Anomie Publishing, London, in association with Timothy Taylor and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.

Daniel Crews-Chubb was born in Northampton in 1984. He completed his BA at Chelsea College of Arts, London, in 2009 and undertook the Turps Studio Programme, London, in 2013. He lives and works in London. His first solo museum exhibition will take place at the Long Museum, Shanghai, in November 2024.