Since completing her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 1995, Cyan Dee (aka M. Edmondson) has shown internationally with galleries such as Victoria Miro Gallery (London), Laurent Delaye Gallery (London), Galerie Axel Thieme (Darmstadt), Archimede Staffolini Gallery (Nicosia), Andre Millan Gallery (São Paulo), Oscar Cruz Gallery (Rio), the apartment (Athens), Galeria Mário Sequeira (Braga), DomoBaal (London), The Sander Collection (Berlin), Galerie Peter Zimmermann (Mannheim), Nicholas Robinson Gallery (NY), and UNIX Gallery (NY). Her paintings have been shown in public spaces/museums, including Whitechapel Gallery (London), Centro Brasileiro Britânico (São Paulo), Stills (Edinburgh), Museum Voorlinden (Netherlands), The Nunnery (London), Harris Museum (Preston), Rangers House Museum (London), Cornerhouse (Manchester), The Exchange-Newlyn Art Gallery, Bradford1-Bradford Museum, and most recently at Graves Gallery/Museums Sheffield as part of Group exhibition 'HEADS ROLL’, which was curated by Paul Morrison in 2018. Her paintings have been shown in numerous curated shows alongside the works of Alex Katz, Glenn Brown, Peter Doig, John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton, Yinka Shonibare, Jeff Koons, Tony Oursler, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Cindy Sherman, Mariko Mori, Marlene Dumas, Michael Craig-Martin, Paul Morrison, Mark Wallinger, Andy Warhol and many more.

As a regular feature of auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s, a couple of her paintings have achieved more than 6 figures (USD) in the past.

 

She is a British artist. After a four-year stint in NY, she now lives and works in London, where she has been since the early 80s.

 

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I regard my practice as a 'representation of painting’ rather than being representational.

Despite the overt use of faces as image sources, I regard my work as neither figurative paintings nor portraits. These paintings mimic the styles and codes of the desire industry, employing the momentary seduction of fashion photography to lure viewers into a world of idealised beauty and yearning while questioning the value and obsessions of aspirational perfection.

Just as in fashion photography, where the model is a support for the product and contextualises it, such images also support and contextualise these large paintings. Although seductive, the ideal they present becomes hyper-real in a Baudrillardian sense; the image is devoid of identity and is essentially an empty facade, which is quickly consumed, giving way to the anxiety and obsession that assert these paintings as paintings. Beyond the image that gives them their presence, what is being portrayed here is the question of the aspirational perfection of the medium and language of painting itself. As the viewer engages with these works and scans the surface, shifting their reading between fantasy and the tropes of modernist abstract painting, the skin of the image and the skin of the painted surface, these works become paintings of unattainable desire.

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