Post-War & Contemporary

Provenance:
Private Collection, UK.

Exhibited:
London, Fire Station 1 Chiltern Street, Paul Fryer: Potential and Ground, 8 Feb. – 10 March 2007.
Winchcombe, Sudeley Castle, Phillips de Pury & Company, Reconstruction 3, 1 June – 31 Oct. 2008.
Florence, Gucci Museo, Paul Fryer: Lo Spirito Vola, 7 March – 18 Nov. 2012.

After attending Leeds College of Art in the 1980s alongside Damien Hirst, Paul Fryer became an electro-pop singer and transvestite DJ, founding the famous Kit Cat Club in Leeds. After moving to London he started designing books and other printed materials for artists, fashion houses and record labels, and his book of poetry, Don’t Be So…, was illustrated by Damien Hirst and published by Trolley Books in 2001. His art engages with Christian Gnosticism and cutting-edge scientific research – ideas which come together in one of Fryer’s most important works: Ecce Homo.

As he has explained: ‘Ecce Homo was the ultimate of my egg and nest series. I thought of the logos of Christ and the head gestating the egg idea of freedom, crowned by suffering. The black egg is the Vedic symbol of spirit. To me it represents spirit conquering suffering, in the gnostic sense. Ultimately though the work is intended as a meditation on these and other mysteries. I would encourage people to arrive at their own gnosis, the truest solitary experience one can have here on earth’ (Paul Fryer, 2006). The work was exhibited at the Gucci Museum in 2012 alongside a sculpture of a dead Christ on an electric chair and the figure of a drowned Ophelia, floating in a water tank.

We are very grateful to Paul Fryer for his assistance in the preparation of this catalogue entry.