NEW YORK, NY.- Hollis Taggart, director of the eponymous Hollis Taggart Galleries in New York, has announced the opening of a comprehensive exhibition of the work of Clive Head, who is widely considered one of the leading realist painters of his generation. Titled Clive Head: Zoetic Realism, the show presents a selection of two dozen works on canvas and paper, and marks the official launch of the artist’s association with the gallery.

U.K. born, Head is known for his complex compositions of human activities, which have an energized, zoetic, and highly engaging effect upon the observer. Unlike past Photorealists, Head does not reveal a single moment in time, instead he captures multiple concurrent timelines moving through time and space. These fragmented urban depictions, most often with figures, are in essence time-lapsed compilations, in which time seems to come to a kaleidoscopic halt on the canvases. Seen against Head’s forerunners, such as David Hockney and Lucian Freud, as well as contemporaries such as Peter Doig, Head has established a unique position in the contemporary arena.

A child prodigy, beginning his instruction at the Reeds Art Club at age eleven, Head later attended Aberystwyth University. In 1994, he became Chair of the Fine Art Department at the University of York, while simultaneously participating in exhibitions of his work throughout the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. He was commissioned in 2005 to create a painting of Buckingham Palace to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, and five years later, he was invited by the National Gallery of London to show three large-scale paintings of the city, curated by Colin Wiggins, who also wrote an essay for the exhibition catalog.