Dan Yoshii is pleased to present Boutique, a presentation of new paintings by UK-based English artist Alessandro Raho. Recognized for his nuanced portraits of friends and family often depicted in a stripped-down, minimal fashion, Raho has developed a distinctive visual language that elicits a feeling of intimacy between the artist, subject, and viewer.
Boutique, a collection of twelve small and medium-format oil on canvas paintings, marks another trajectory in Raho's practice: still life. The works grew out of the portraits, in which the clothing of his sitters, set against a pure white ground, took on the quality of still life. Employing the same clean-cut approach to composition and mark-making, Raho now lets everyday objects stand alone. A small wrapped box of chocolates is placed against a stark white background, a dramatic stage that directs the viewer's attention solely to the object, while the cool and warm tones of the white ground and shadows rendered in buttery brushstrokes create dimensionality, atmosphere, and a gentle harmony across the visual plane.
Raho is interested in the theatrics of stil life — objects arranged and presented for the sole purpose of looking. Paintings such as Flowers and Chocolate and Marimekko Cups speak to his fascination with encountering objects in boutiques, where items are carefully arranged with the seductive goal of display. Yet the pull he describes has little to do with possession. As Raho puts it, the experience is one of "walking in a store, seeing something that lifts your senses, colours, presentation, all kinds of desires. Not of ownership, not of a desire to buy things, but the visual thrill and delight."
Painting a still life is, for Raho, a process in which an object becomes an image, and that image an illusion of an object — something both there and not there, with the glisten of the oil returning the viewer to the surface. In an age of ceaseless images, he finds something redemptive in slowing down to look. The works in Boutique invite the viewer to pause and fall into the pleasure of simply looking.
Alessandro Raho's work has been exhibited internationally, including in Tokyo, London, New York, and Paris, and is held in the public collections of the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and Tate in London, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. His special commissions include Brasenose College at the University of Oxford, the official portrait of Matthew Barzun (US Ambassador to the UK), and a portrait of Dame Judi Dench for the National Portrait Gallery.
