Background

David Batchelor was born on July 17, 1955, in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom. He and his older brother, Stephen Batchelor, grew up in a humanist environment with his mother Phyllis (born 1913) in Watford, north west of London. Stephen Batchelor is a Buddhist scholar and author.

Education

David Batchelor studied Fine Art at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University) from 1975 - 1978, and Cultural Theory at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham (1978 - 1980).

Career

Batchelor’s work comprises three-dimensional structures, photographs, paintings and drawings, and it mostly relates to a long term interest in colour and urbanism. He has exhibited widely in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and the Americas.

David's recent exhibitions include Flatlands, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh/Spike Island, Bristol (2013/2014); Chromophilia: 1995-2010, Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro (2010); Color Chart, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008) and Tate Liverpool (2009); Extreme Abstraction, Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2005); the Biennial de Santiago, Chile (2005); Shiny Dirty, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2004); the 26th Bienal De São Paulo (2004); Sodium and Asphalt, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2003); and Days Like These: Tate Britain Triennial of Contemporary Art, Tate Britain, London (2003).

In January 2015 Batchelor presented Monochrome Archive 1997-2015, a large-scale installation at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, as a part of their exhibition Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915 - 2015.

David also known as a writer. He is interested in reconsidering colour theories from a contemporary context, which he explores in Chromophobia (2000), a book dedicated to the subject. His book on colour, The Luminious and the Grey, was published by Reaktion Books in February 2014. Colour (2008), an anthology of writings on colour from 1850 to the present, edited by Batchelor, is published by Whitechapel, London and MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Achievements

• David Batchelor is an outstanding artist. He is best known for his vividly-coloured sculptural installations of illuminated lightboxes, industrial dollies, and other found objects. His book Chromophobia (2000) is available in eight languages.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Luminous and the Grey

    (The Luminous and the Grey explores the places where color...)

    2014
  • Chromophobia

    (The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophob...)

    2000
  • Minimalism

    (Many people have difficulty in appreciating Carl Andre's ...)

    1997

• painting

  • Disco

  • Slugfest

    2012

  • Idiot Stick 22

    2006

  • Against Nature (detail)

    2005

  • Electric Colour Picture

    2002

  • Brick Lane Remix I

    2003

  • Walldella IV

    2006

  • Untitled Drawing

    2006

  • Parapillar 7 (Multicolour)

    2006

  • Niche Drawing

    2002

  • I Love King's Cross and King's Cross Loves Me, 8

    2007

  • Angular 1

  • Candela 7/450 (For the Death Star)

    2007

  • Hackney Road Drawing

    2004

Views

Quotations: "When I make works from light boxes (such as Brick Lane Remix, 2003), or old plastic bottles with lights inside, I hope the illumination suspends their objecthood to some degree and makes the viewer see them a little differently – see them as colours before seeing them as objects."

"I often use colour to attack form, to break it down a little or begin to dissolve it. But I am not at all interested in ‘pure’ colour or in colour as a transcendental presence… So if I use colours to begin to dissolve forms, I also use forms to prevent colours becoming entirely detached from their everyday existence."

Connections

Mother:

Phyllis Batchelor

Brother:

Stephen Batchelor

Stephen Batchelor is a contemporary Buddhist teacher and writer, best known for his secular or agnostic approach to Buddhism.