Exhibition opens 9th of June to 20th July 2023
A few minutes’ walk from Fortnum and Masons, the Sims Reed Gallery is hosting a fascinating exhibition.
Aaron Kasmin – Bubbles
Strike a Light takes its inspiration from Matchbooks. Now, in the pursuit of full disclosure, I wasn’t sure what matchbooks were before visiting this exhibition, but once I saw the display I was transported back to my younger days. Not quite as sturdy as the wooden stemmed matches and housed in a more flimsy wrap, the matches were peeled off a stack of two rows of 5 or six matches. These matches worked as well as their more expensive counterparts, but the more heavy handed could easily find them bending before bursting into flame.
It was a chance find at a Car Boot Sale in Normandy in 2012, that provided a eureka moment for British artist Aaron Kasmin, here showing his biggest exhibition to date, with 30 new artworks, drawn from the artist’s treasured vintage matchbook collection.
Kasmin became an avid collector of Lion Match Company’s matchbooks inspired by their lively and inventive images that reflect the rise of America’s consumer culture, originally mass-produced for advertising purposes. In the early 1920s, the humble matchbook soon became the most effective advertising medium and is now embraced by every industry.
Aaron Kasmin The Chef Aaron Kasmin The Palette
The Matchbook increased in popularity through the 1920s and 30s and up to the second world war when matches began to be superseded by the BIC lighter.
Safe in a glass cabinet are 98 such examples of matchbooks, and repay the viewer’s closer inspection.
The Sims Reed Gallery is transformed into the dynamism of a bygone America, setting the opulent party scene for viewers to wander to exotic places, and venture back in time to the glamourous early to mid-20th Century America – also known as a romantic world in the era of F Scott Fitzgerald, Humphrey Bogart and Raymond Chandler.
Aaron Kasmin Vogue
The exhibition features coloured pencil drawings (30 x 21 cm) in Aaron Kasmin’s signature style of fusing together vibrant colours with striking imagery shedding a new light on American culture. The drawings are a dynamic, bold paeon to a glamourous bygone age
Look carefully at some of the images (and also the matchbooks) and it is possible to see how the artists have incorporated the actual match into the design. In some you can see the sulphur end of the matches forming the bristles of paint brushes, elsewhere the sulphur ends become the tips of a lipstick
This exhibition is well worth a visit and the drawings can be purchased, £1750 framed.
Images courtesy of Aaron Kasmin and Sims Reed Gallery
43A Duke Street St Jame’s,
London
SW1Y 6DD
+44 (0)207 930 5111