By Umer Nangiana

“For me drawing is a kind of dreaming. It’s a kind of place where forms and shapes and things don’t have to obey the laws of gravity,” says David Batchelor, the Scotland-born British artist whose solo exhibition of artwork titled ‘Flatlands Remix’ has opened here at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCU-Qatar).
The exhibition, organised in partnership with the British Council and British Embassy in support of the British Festival 2015, is based on Batchelor’s solo exhibition ‘Flatlands’ (2013), which was guest-curated by Andrea Schlieker with The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and Spike Island, Bristol.
Flatlands Remix at VCU-Qatar brings together David Batchelor’s intricate and vibrant drawings such as the one titled ‘Atomic Drawing’ from 2011 which is spray paint with gaffer tape, pencil and ink on card.
In the same medium, the exhibition also includes one of the atomic drawings from 2009 which is done in different dimensions. Batchelor has used various mediums to create his drawings such as spray paint and ink on card.
The exhibition also includes his more recent exploration into painting. Alongside these works the exhibition presents a group of Batchelor’s colour-based sculptures, and a new digital installation of his ‘Found Monochromes (1997-2015),’ a series of white rectangular and square panels encountered on walks through cities around the world.
He is best known for his vivid three-dimensional structures made from re-purposed domestic and light industrial objects such as light boxes, dollies and detergent bottles which have been augmented to enhance their synthetic colour, a colour that could only have been created by a modern world.
His work revels in the brilliant hues of artificial colour and illuminated light, often hinting at the urban landscape. Since the late 1990s drawing has been at the heart of Batchelor’s work, allowing him a freedom he cannot exercise in his sculptural work.
“Consistently intelligent, playful and revealing, his work represents some of the best, and most colourful, British art being made today,” say Sinta Berry, the Touring Exhibitions Manager, and Harriet Cooper, the Touring Exhibitions Assistant, talking about Batchelor’s work.
They say the artist has held an important place in the British Council Collection from its first acquisition of his work in 2000 to the commission of “much-loved” HK Fesdella light sculpture for its Hong Kong office in 2008.
“His work has been included in some of our (British Council’s) most successful and far-reaching exhibitions including ‘Multiplication’ which toured extensively around South America and Europe form 2001-06,” say the managers.  
Artist and Writer, David Batchelor was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1955 and lives and works in London. He has edited and written a number of books including Chromophobia (2000), On Colour and the Fear of Colour in the West, and The Luminious and the Grey (2014).
His recent solo exhibitions include Monochrome Archive, 1997-2015, Whitechapel Gallery London (2015), ‘Concretos’ New Art Centre, Roche Court, UK (2014), Flatlands at Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh and Spike Island, Bristol (2013-14).
Batchelor’s major group exhibitions include ‘Light Show’, Hayward Gallery London, Auckland Art Gallery New Zealand and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2013-15) besides ‘Color Chart’, Museum of Modern Art New York and Tate Liverpool (2008-09).
The artist’s commissions and public artworks include Big Rock Candy Fountain (2010), a ten-metre-high light installation at Archway tube station in London, funded by Arts Council England, and Chromolocomotion (2014), a Terrace Wires commission for St Pancras International London.
Visitors can view his work at VCU-Qatar Gallery until April 21.