In a new show, two decades of work from the Australian illustrator-painter Shaun Tan are offered, spanning both his child-oriented characters and more mature narratives. “Untold Tales,” kicking off at Beinart Gallery on March 9 and running through the end of the month. Tan’s survey includes oil paintings, colored pencil and pen, pastel, and more.
“They collectively present a cross-section of narrative experiments exploring the fertile ground between childhood picture books and adult fables, each image suggesting a deeper story that is best left to unfold in the mind of the viewer: a family living happily in a skull, an unexpected dinner guest, a bird king, a lonely creature living in a bathroom, a portrait that’s also a landscape,” the gallery says. “These are strange and highly personal visions that speak of everyday, universal feelings, and they present a special insight into the broader working practices of one of the world’s most acclaimed illustrators.”
See more images from the show below.
Though gorgeously rendered, Chester Arnold’s paintings don’t idealize the state of nature. It depicts how, despite humanity’s best efforts, the Earth endures the accumulation of humanity’s waste and development. Cascading piles of tires and trash becomes their own mountainous formations.
In what the artist himself calls "homespun faerie tales",