The Polad-Hardouin gallery is proud to welcome the first solo exhibition of Andrew Gilbert in Paris. He is a young Scottish artist, born in 1980.

Andrew Gilbert leads us deeply into the excesses and the savagery of the British Colonial wars. This obsessive and recurrent theme enables him to revisit, with fantasy, irony and ferocity, the great moments of English military history (Scotland, India, Africa).

Andrew Gilbert is one of the rare British artist to tackle such a sensitive subject: these past events could provoke a disturbing interrogation in a country which hasn’t openly examined all the aspects of the colonial era. In his drawings, every event depicted is historical. He recreates with accuracy and high precision the details of the costumes, the positions of the battalions. However, he lets loose his flamboyant and satirical imagination, and turns himself into the hero of his own stories. In these auto-fictions, we find him in India in 1857 as a soldier of the Empire, as well as in South Africa, at Shaka Zulu’s side. Gilbert doesn’t hesitate to blend horror and erotic fantasies. He also loves conversing with his favorite artists and depicting his imaginary encounters such as with Beckmann or Kirchner for example.

Like Lucy Stein, Markus Selg, Astrid Sourkova and many others, Andrew Gilbert is part of the contemporary scene in Berlin. A joint exhibition with Andreas Hofer is planned for 2012 in Edinburgh.