THE GOLDEN RATIO

Ella Garvey, Marina Iglesias, Lorena Lohr, Lily Macrae, Chris Oh, Aniela Preston, Samo Shalaby, Becky Tucker and Rosa-Johan Uddoh

5th of June - 29th of June

Private View 5th of June 6-8pm

‘We must always take from nature what we paint, and always choose the most beautiful things.’ (Alberti, De Pictura)

‘Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive’ (Alberti, De Pictura)

Soho Revue is pleased to present, ‘The Golden Ratio’, a group exhibition of artists who take late-medieval/ Renaissance visual culture as their inspiration, creating works that range from altar pieces and ceramic armour to jewellery and intricate curios. The exhibition title refers less to its implied mathematical specifics and more generally to Western art and thought of the sixteenth-century, particularly to the values of proportion, beauty, harmony, rationality and the wonder of sacred patterns in the natural world as laid out by notorious humanists such as Vitruvius and Alberti. ‘The golden ratio’ has been a source of fascination throughout the history of art and architecture from Japanese artist Hokusai, to modernist architect Le Corbusier, and this exhibition demonstrates a return to beauty and harmony, revealing a search for order to contrast the discord that is so prevalent in modern life. Crucially, The Golden Ratio examines how these ancient structures can still provide a widely recognised framework and language for examining modern concerns of identity and culture.