Kids use Laptops: Neil Haas

Union Gallery is pleased to present Kids use Laptops, Neil Haas’ first exhibition with the gallery, curated by William Gustafsson.

The bedroom, a bedroom, your bedroom, my bedroom.

The door shuts behind you, you’ve entered your safe space, a space to call your own. Throughout our teenage years, our bedrooms were a private haven to invoke, explore, reflect, learn, and connect with our fantasies, desires, and obsessions. It was the place where one first experiences these moments with themselves.

Kids use Laptops explores the intimacy of an adolescent bedroom through an installation comprising of drawing, painting, sculpture and appliqué. Haas rekindles the tenderness of the bedroom, renegotiating his own youth, providing an opportunity to rewrite / relive. Adolescence is a fragile yet intense period where a young person discovers himself or herself, physically, sexually, and intellectually. Haas examines this via his own queer perspective probing his own masculinity.

Fictional narratives fill the walls through paintings but also hanging blinds serving as false architecture, the bedroom window you would stare out of, lost in your own thoughts, problems, and emotions. The bed serves as a place to take a moment, rest your head on the pube-lined pillows, and reflect. Visitors are welcome to enter the bed.

Throughout the opening night there was a performance by local youths, hanging out without guidance. They were identifiable by their hoodies customised by the artist. Some of the material from the presence of these young males was left over after the opening and became part of the work.

Neil Haas, b. 1971 in South Shields, UK, completed his MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in 2014. His recent exhibitions include Wildflowers, Galerie Iragui, Moscow (2018); I've still got it but do I want it, Delf, Vienna (2017); Spunky Clipper, Almanac, London (2017) and Not Really Really, Frédéric de Goldschmidt collection, Brussels (2016).

Neil Haas lives and works in London, UK