Peter Doig: Cabins and Canoes

Faurschou Foundation is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in China dedicated to one of the most important painters of our time, Peter Doig. 

Curated by Francis Outred, Cabins and Canoes: The Unreasonable Silence of the World; is a tightly-curated selection of the painter’s signature motifs: cabins and canoes. The exhibition will feature some of Doig’s most celebrated paintings including, Swamped (1990), The Architect’s Home in the Ravine (1991), and Daytime Astronomy (1997-98). The paintings will be juxtaposed with excerpts from Albert Camus’ writings to question the condition of human experience as explored in Doig’s practice.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue containing a complete survey of Doig’s “Cabins” and “Canoes,” as well as texts by Francis Outred, Anna Campbell and the renowned artist Zeng Fanzhi.

Doig’s itinerant past, moving throughout his childhood and early adult life from Edinburgh to Trinidad and then Canada to London, finds a keen expression in two consistent strands of imagery in his work: cabins and canoes. For Doig, these motifs are more than recollections of his travels. They are the vehicles through which he seeks to dramatize the workings of memory itself.

A centrepiece of the exhibition Daytime Astronomy (1997–98) captures a moment of profound revelation: as a seventeen-year-old boy, working on Canada’s wide-open Western plains, it is the moment that the artist first became aware of the void that separates man from the world around him. A symphony in paint, the surface of Daytime Astronomy projects the hallucinogenic experience of not only watching the sky—but also of remembering it.

Peter Doig
Peter Doig was born in 1959 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Known as one of the most renowned living painters, he spent most of his childhood in Canada, studied in London, and has settled in Trinidad since 2002. After graduating from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in 1990, Doig’s artistic career was launched after receiving the prestigious Whitechapel Artist Award in 1991 and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994. In January 2017 he was the fourth artist to receive the annual Art Icon award at the Whitechapel Gallery in partnership with Swarovski. He has also been the subject of several solo exhibitions including those at the Tate Britain in London in 2008 and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2014. His 2013 solo exhibition No Foreign Lands at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, which toured to Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, was universally celebrated, with the Financial Times stating: “Anyone interested in the future of painting, and its difficult relationship with tradition, should see this show.” In 2015 his major solo exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art was described by Artforum as “a subscription to the singular power of pictures.” Doig currently lives and works in Trinidad, New York and London.

Francis Outred
Francis Outred is Chairman and Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, EMERI at Christie’s. After graduating from Chelsea School of Art in 1995, where he was taught by Peter Doig, he went on to curate a number of group exhibitions including Life/Live (1997), which toured to museums Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon. At Christie’s he has overseen exhibitions including: House of Cards at Waddesdon Manor (2012), When Britain Went Pop (2013) which inspired a follow-on exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; Polke/Richter, Richter/Polke (2014); The Bad Shepherd (2014–15); and Reflections on the Self (2015). Known for his innovative approach to the auction business Francis Outred has been responsible for the consignment and sale of some of the most significant paintings, including Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, at the time the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. 

Press inquiries
For further information please contact: 
Cecilia Pedersen (cecilia [​at​] faurschou.com / T +45 33914131); for Chinese inquiry please contact Rebecca Yang (rebecca [​at​] faurschou.com / T +86 13146006899)