I did but touch the honey of romance...

For his first solo exhibition at Carter Presents, Cedric Christie uses the scaffolding pole in a critical appraisal of modernism. These are the most ambitious
scaffolding sculptures Christie has made yet and Carter Presents is delighted to have the opportunity to exhibit them.

T he scaffolding like Andre's bricks are the workaday instruments of modern growth and construction now re used to explore simple forms. Donald Judd shaped industrial materials exploring limited form ad infinitem whilst Robert Ryman has spent a lifetime negotiating the subtleties of white in his canvases.
Christie's art is similarly rigorous and uncompromising, but a young artist in the 21st century producing minimal work today can't proceed with the same
modernist intent and flawed certainty. This work then knowingly agitates underlying subtexts. A large scaffolding sculpture referencing Malevich's Suprematist. ideals and hopes which were tragically crushed by Stalin after the October revolution. Another is wrapped in the pages of the Financial Times Magazine "How To Spend It" magazine. Art now as a necessary luxury or a luxurious necessity. food for the gods as opposed to fish and chips
wrapped in the daily news. food for the masses.

Another work, is a small red cross made of scaffolding The red cross on white reminds one of chest pounding caucasian working class nationalism in a multi
culturally ethnically diverse England. And the artist a former welder engages with and acknowledges the multiplicity of interwoven references with this loading of the symbol, Christian, Constructionist or Constructivist and the raising of hopes and shattering of ideals. The Cross of Saint George, the English national flag is today potentially polarizing rather than a flag of unification and is a blinkered and romantic vision of England baseless, false and redundant as Poussin's vision of arcadia is to the French.

Outside the gallery, two cars sit on the forecourt covered in rally style transfers. One commissioned by Hull Time Based Art celebrating William Wilberforce's
importance in next years bicentennial of the abolition of slavery in this country and on the other car advertising names of well known contemporary artists. The artist as brand and traders in cultural commodities.