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Bobby Dowler

@bobbydowler

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Show open until 6pm this Sat 8th Nov @vie_projects_ curated by @yasmine.helou taken in Paris, France by @bobbydowler

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a year ago

These recent artworks represent an evolution in my work! While each piece still emerges from my established method of cutting, pasting, painting, and building—utilizing remnants from rejected paintings and wood-stretcher frame supports—these are more explicitly sculptural, and incomplete by nature.

I treat the canvas like a physical building block, whose dimensions and "objectness" help me to stimulate discovery through creative action. These are balancing triplets that make up pyramid-like forms. Each painting is placed, not fixed, allowing them to be easily dismantled and reformed by hand without tools. I do not plan outcomes; I am guided by surprise. To me, they appear like architectural maquettes—irrational, dreamy, or childlike inventions.

Further development is permitted during exhibitions, via my invitation for communal action. I invite the viewer to join my process by deconstructing and reforming each sculpture to create new combinations according to their own creative whims. taken in La SIRA by @bobbydowler

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9 months ago

A few snippets from a new AMAZING book out now by @aptexhibitions !
Thank u @___miso_______ @robinleverton for my signed copy (I compelled them to sign it :) taken in London, England by @bobbydowler

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23 days ago

PAINTING-OBJECT(10-25)S&S.JDS-YH

A site-specific hanging sculpture by Bobby Dowler @bobbydowler, crafted specially for Surplus & System: Studies in Rebuilt Form. In collaboration with architect Julien De Smedt @juliendesmedt and curator Yasmine Helou @yasmine.helou

On view until 08 November.

Opening hours: 11h00 - 18h00, Monday - Saturday
Address: Vie Projects, 55 Boulevard Beaumarchais, 75003, Paris

Exhibition curated by Yasmine Helou @yasmine.helou
Photos by Fionn O’Toole @fionn.otoole by @bobbydowler

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a year ago

I started collecting free, discarded art monographs & catalogues left outside a secondhand bookshop a few years back near where I was hosted. The original plan was simple: brush up on art history and French at the same time!
For about five years, these heavy books moved around with me from place to place around Paris. Over time, I stopped seeing them as reference material and started seeing them as discarded physical objects. I decided to swap my usual studio materials—orphaned paintings—for these mass-produced images of historical paintings, creating a side-quest I could work on at home late at night.
I began ripping out pages, organising them into boxes of cut-outs, and applying my usual cut-and-paste process but now to printed reproductions of “paintings”. I pulled out classic high-art tropes—like traditional flower paintings by the "masters"—to play around with the same notions as usual: taste, kitsch, and originality.
The turning point came from another piece of rescued trash: a pirate-themed colouring book my son had scribbled in with felt-tip pens. Saved from the bin, it was his display of raw, uninhibited energy - that represented a long-term art preference of mine - call it what you will.
One night I ended up bringing these two worlds together. Laying a cut-out of classic flowers directly onto a half-complete colouring page of a pirate ship, creating this immediate, absurd collision: "Flowers of the Caribbean"- a nod to a Paul McCarthy installation I saw at the old Hauser & Wirth space off Brick Lane circa 2005—clashing generic high-art reproductions with the chaotic dabs of a (my) kid. By mashing up discarded monographs with discarded colouring books, I think it disrupts hierarchies of value and skill, finding something in the middle between highbrow history and personality.
1/ Flowers of the Caribbean #1, 2025, collage on paper, found and manipulated objects (monograph extracts, pre-existing pirate colouring-in book pages), PVA glue, 26h x 20w cm.
2/ Flowers of the Caribbean #2, 2025...
3/ Flowers of the Caribbean #3, 2025...
4/ Flowers of the Caribbean #4, 2025... taken in London, England by @bobbydowler

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2 months ago

MERIDIES I: BOBBY DOWLER | Order interrupted 🌞

In ‘Painting Object_02(c05-23)’, @bobbydowler turns the hidden architecture of painting outward. A found wooden stretcher frame is reversed and brought into view, while painted fragments of canvas are joined to form a single, unique object.

The work retains the evidence of its making: edges, joins, interruptions and traces of earlier use. Dowler’s practice often begins with materials that already carry a history, including found paintings, discarded canvases, stretcher bars and studio offcuts. These are cut, layered, repainted and reassembled, allowing their previous lives to remain active within a new composition.

Rather than concealing the support, Dowler makes it part of the image. Painting is no longer only surface; it acquires weight, depth, seams and a physical presence in the world.

Presented within Meridies, where form, gesture and material come into sharp focus, the work speaks through construction, tension and salvage. Geometry meets irregularity, fragments become structure, and the familiar language of painting is remade as something spatial and fully present.

Bobby Dowler Painting Object_02(c05-23), 2023 Oil and acrylic on canvas fragments and found wooden stretcher frame 40 × 30 × 1.5 cm Unique

Part of FENESTRA, a slow summer window into Mediterranean contemporary art.

15 July–29 September 2026 Curated by @magnustempus360 x @_struttura_  Presented in partnership with @artsy and @artnet

#explore #ContemporaryArt #artist #cyprus #italia taken in Paris, France by @bobbydowler

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3 months ago

V. happy and honoured to be opening a solo project tomorrow eve Weds @vie_projects_ in Paris. Come visit if you are in town! Curated by @yasmine.helou special assistance by @juliendesmedt taken in Paris, France by @bobbydowler

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a year ago

Painting-Object_02(c01-26)P.P, 2026, paint and objects,
21h x 14w x 14d (variable)
Recently exhibited in Planning Permission group show at @freshsaladart (thank u for the 📷) in Brighton, GB.
Stepping away from the
role of just "object maker", experiementing with somesort of quasi-spiritual-Beuysian mediator attitude, I invited the organisers of this exh to reconfigure the various 'painting-objects' parts of this artwork according to their own intuition. In this sense artistic
community is the primary driver of the work. taken in Brighton, England, UK by @bobbydowler

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8 months ago

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3 months ago

A few more closer-up pics arrived courtesy of the best curator @yasmine.helou .

It's hard to explain the messy chaos and chance events that take place in my process, but as a little insight, the ceramic cactus was bought from a supermarket in two halves near Lisbon, glued together then painted by studio assistants (unbeknownst to them), then finally married to this pile up of canvasses in CDMX. I was inspired by a kitsch set of mini canvases that one can purchase cheaply. In my more recent, more sculptural work nothing is fixed and so the composition can change over time and sometimes it does! At some point an obvious, yet not often said truth dawned on me: The owner of an object nearly always has the legal right to do whatever they want with 'their' possessions (I've been re-cycling paintings and their frames for a looooong time), and this includes artwork originally made by others. I just make this more explicit now by telling people to do what they want, and it has led to many curious results. (This work was executed before I made it explicit, although it was always lurking, uncomfortably in the background). Sometimes a friend, curator or gallerist would suggest turning my apparently finished painting-object upside-down or back-to-front. I had to swallow my ego, and admit that I was no genius artist, but more of a principal servant helping guide a weird communal process into new and unknown territories. by @bobbydowler

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9 months ago

THE LIFE OF SURPLUS & SYSTEMS
LAST HOURS TO VISIT @bobbydowler

Our visitors responded to the artist’s invitation to interact with the works and assemble their own. The works took many forms, evolving with the daily interactions.

Dates: 22.10 - 08.11
Opening hours: 11h00 - 18h00
Address: Vie Projects, 55 Boulevard Beaumarchais, 75003, Paris

Exhibition curated by Yasmine Helou @yasmine.helou
Photos by Fionn O’Toole @fionn.otoole taken in Paris, France by @bobbydowler

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a year ago

DETAILS
Surplus & System: Studies in Rebuilt Form
Painting Objects by Bobby Dowler @bobbydowler

Until Saturday November 08

Vie Projects, 55 Boulevard Beaumarchais, 75003, Paris

Exhibition curated by Yasmine Helou @yasmine.helou
Photos by Fiona O’Toole @fionn.otoole by @bobbydowler

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a year ago