Selected for 2018 RSA New Contemporaries, David Rae is part of a growing interest in the possibility of unspoken narratives through the use of realism and subtraction. Rae’s paintings offer a remarkable sense of space through the realistic rendition of textures and perspective and behind this curtain of reality the figureless, empty spaces suggest an uneasy absence. The resulting imagery has connotations of an unfinished story or a hidden truth, a simple device to incite curiosity. This tension between presence and absence is evocative of the empty spaces painted by Turner Prize winner, George Shaw. Famous for his portrayal of the built environment, Shaw shows the dislocated beauty of the urban versus natural world and similarly, Rae’s work suggestively imitates the beauty of human and natural environments while maintaining a perspicuous stillness which is both disquieting and analytical.
