When young emerging artist Rhed first burst onto the art scene with his first solo exhibition at Tanya Baxter Contemporary in 2018, he was hailed by some as the new Basquiat. There was a flair, an excitement in his paintings. Having an eclectic cultural background, with a childhood spent between New York and London, his paintings exuded an engaging mixture of innocence and confidence. He embraced an expressionist style and vibrant colours, coupled with the freedom and dynamic energy of New York graffiti art. His time in New York was the beginning of his adventure into creating compositions on a large scale, expressing emotions and being motivated by the adrenaline of the city.
This unfettered approach emanated perhaps from Rhed’s early exposure to many artistic disciplines, from cinema to performing and visual arts. As a teenager, he was fascinated by cinema, inspiring him to create storyboards, short films and fine art photographs. He has also always loved music and feels it is an integral element of his art. There is a strong rhythm in Rhed’s painting; the beat and pulse playfully control the canvas.
Moving to London to study fine art several years ago, Rhed embarked on a more academic and studious path. With an eagerness and an appetite for learning, he attended all the major museum and gallery shows, meeting some of the iconic legends of the art world including Peter Blake, Paula Rego, Anthony Eyton, Ken Howard and Frank Auerbach. He remembers being so impressed by the latter: “What I find most extraordinary is the discipline, vision and sheer guts it takes. I love the fact that Frank Auerbach is so deeply ensconced in his work… For over 60 years, he has had so much to achieve and depict on canvas, he resents missing any time away from the studio.”
Rhed reveres the artists of the London School, including Auerbach, Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon and David Hockney. He came to understand that through their technical excellence, they succeeded in pursuing forms of figurative painting in the face of avant-garde approaches in the 1970s. By depicting the figure and their own everyday landscapes, they succeeded in conveying in a broader sense the vitality of the human condition. Rhed aspires to emulate their intensity of figurative painting in his own works.
After a post-graduate diploma at Central Saint Martins, Rhed enrolled in the Royal Drawing School in Shoreditch, where he took to the more disciplined training immediately and where he continues to study life drawing. The traditional skills he has acquired there are more evident in his latest series of paintings. “I believe that one’s technical ability can always be improved. Especially as a young painter, I want to learn all the rules before I can break them.”
In his second exhibition at Tanya Baxter Contemporary in 2020, Rhed already displayed a more structured approach in his self-portraits and portraits of family and friends, as well as a greater psychological intensity. Since then, he has developed this further, while continuing to explore different artistic approaches.
“I feel that my painting style has changed a lot over the years through a mix of intense life drawing, growing up, and being constantly inspired by the world around me. My main subject recently has been discovering deeply the anatomy of the human body. Not so much the structure but as an object of beauty, how it moves, ages, changes…”
Important influences in recent years have been a combination of mid-20th century painters and photographers, especially the German-American photographer Helmut Newton (1920-2004), whose subversive approach brought an edge to fashion photography. Newton’s beautiful, powerful work is also disturbing, often evoking a sense of intense but unexplained drama. “What intrigues me about his work is how he lets the human body speak for itself,” says Rhed. Several of Rhed’s paintings imply similarly unspoken psychological dramas.
The title of Rhed’s third exhibition at Tanya Baxter Contemporary in 2021, entitled “As Above, So Below”, perhaps originated in this idea, as Rhed explained, “I am fascinated about the inner and outer world, especially where they meet. I would say the work in the show captures that feel of what is real and what we think is real.”
The process of Rhed’s painting varies, especially if he is painting from life. “Normally I have quite a lot going on in the studio – loud music, sketches everywhere, lots of people around – ironically [all this helps me] concentrate. However, when I have a life model in the room, I want the complete opposite: the silence and intimacy make me understand better who I am really painting.”
Rhed is a painter of the 21st century and speaks for the millennial generation. It is encouraging that he takes such a serious approach to figurative painting, displaying a passion for art as well as a modesty and an eagerness to explore and assimilate. As he says, “The most important thing for me as a young artist is to keep my dignity as a painter. What I mean by this is to constantly be changing, creating, and marvelling at the never-ending beauties of the world we live in. For me, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”