Employing a range of disciplines to express his theme, British artist Chase Valentin has evolved an extensive body of work that includes painting, music, film, photography and the written word. Often probing the shadow content of the psyche, its enigmatic narrative portrays the artist's personal struggle with forces that drive him to create. With his intention that the work be self-revelatory and connect with an audience on an emotional level, Valentin's approach can be viewed as Expressionist.
“How great and wonderful is the dignity of the human body, how lofty and sublime the human soul,
and finally, how great and illustrious is the excellence of man himself made up of these two parts.”
Gianozzo Manetti 1396-1459
Valentin's paintings have an apparitional quality. Often maintaining a degree of pentimento, they are crafted in layers that veil or reveal incident to evoke a sense of time's momentum. While abstraction plays a significant role in conveying the artist’s narrative, the solitary male figure takes centre stage. Sensually rendered with draughtsmanship influenced by Greco-Roman artistry, his isolated and psychologically charged depictions of warriors and heroes convey intimate expressions of an embattled psyche.
As a painter Valentin defied traditional practice by bouncing radically and freely between expressive styles. Acting largely as his own impresario, he unveiled his work annually as collections with a stylistic theme. Between 1997 - 2017 he showed around six hundred paintings and sculptures, staging twenty solo exhibitions in major European cities including London, Valencia, Padua, Lisbon and Madrid.
1997 Embryogenesis
Cromwell Road Studios, South Kensington, London UK
1998 Opening Doors
Art Connoisseur Gallery, Marylebone, London UK
1999 Juvenilia Act I
Dryden Street Gallery, Covent Garden, London UK
1999 Juvenilia Act II
Dryden Street Gallery, Covent Garden, London UK
1999 Juvenilia Act III
The Red Studio, Westminster, London UK
2000 Corinthians
October Gallery, Mayfair, London UK
2000 Icarus & The Butterfly
Quaker Gallery, Covent Garden, London UK
2001 Histrionics
The Air Gallery, Mayfair, London UK
2002 Tightrope
Prince Consort House, Farringdon, London UK
2002 Unbearably Blue
Maison Lavande, Carcassonne, France
2003 The Perfumer
Quaker Gallery, Covent Garden, London UK
2004 La Ruptura
Galeria Artico, El Pilar, Valencia, Spain
2005 Invisible Gun
Casa de la Cultura, L’Alcudia, Valencia, Spain
2006 New Order
Arte y Arte, Ópera, Madrid, Spain
2007 In Search of Silence
La Nevera, Catadau, Valencia, Spain
2009 Dark Veils
Città Giardino, Padua, Italy
2010 Melancholia
The Black Studio, Lisbon, Portugal
2012 In Loco
Gallery X, Bairro dos Museos, Cascais, Portugal
2017 Parallax
Chelsea Town Hall, Chelsea, London UK
2017 In Pursuit Of The Overman
Ffwrn, Fishguard. Pembrokeshire UK
“When existence seems nothing but a disquieting vacuum, abstraction offers dialogue.”
As an expressive tool Valentin values abstraction as equal to figurative. Whilst sometimes creating singular abstracts to illustrate the narrative, his broader collections are statements in themselves, expressing an evolving thought or state through the exploration of a single motif. Several collections have been commissioned for site-specific installation. Notable examples are the Tightrope series: commissioned by Soufraki Interiors for Prince Consort House in the City of London, and the Corinthians collection commissioned by the Concordia Arts Foundation as a backdrop for the English Song Prize.
Valentin's introduction to the art of 'creating spectacle' first came via circus theatre group Laughter In The Garden. Combining Brechtian stagecraft with elements of Commedia dell'arte, this highly experimental troupe encouraged him to explore all aspects of design, performance and humanity, and established within him an instinct to be bold in his approach to creative challenges. At twenty-one he moved to London, working first at the BBC and then moving into the field of PR, staging and promoting events for the capital's music and fashion industries. These microcosmic pieces of theatre put him into close contact with a range of creative players, prompting his curiosity in multiple disciplines and exciting his interest in collaboration.
Over the coming years as an artist and impresario in his own right Valentin was mindful of theatrical impact, staging and promoting his exhibitions as events. In 2009 he was welcomed into the heart of Lisbon's Teatro Ingles community and began to explore drama production and design. Over the next eight years he tackled a variety of roles with companies including The Lisbon Players, Produçoes Prospero and Feltro Preto. Theatre became the crucible of his creativity that gave rise to many fruitful collaborations.
THE MAN OUTSIDE by Wolfgang Borchert. To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Valentin was invited by German director Rebecca Steingraber to design and co-direct Wolfgang Borchert’s Expressionist drama, 'The Man Outside'. Originally billed as 'the play nobody wants to make and nobody wants to see', it portrays a shell-shocked German soldier returning home after the war. Valentin's single set featured multiple scenic quarters representing a destroyed city and neighbourhood. His costumes combined threadbare 1940s glamour with dramatic allegorical pieces created with seamstress Liz Day.
HAMLET by William Shakespeare. Valentin designed the set and costumes for the Lisbon Players production directed by Jonathan Weightman. The drama is set in a timeless period but the costumes hint at 1940s glamour. The use of bold, dominant nationalistic symbols and industrial slab-like rostra, paint Elsinor Castle as overshadowed by the threat of war. The single set format creates a sense of claustrophobic tension, with a spiral representing 'this mortal coil'.
On moving to Fishguard (Wales) in 2018, his experience and colour was welcomed by the town's colourful residents and for the next five years he worked for the benefit of the community, engaged in producing and directing music projects, developing arts initiatives, and working with venues and organisations to stage and promote live entertainment & events. After a thirty year sabbatical, Valentin also returned to performance, bringing his artistic career full circle to where it began.
Through a fertile association with Lisbon’s Teatro Ingles, Valentin was a familiar enough figure behind the scenes for actors to allow his intimate invasion with a camera. The result is a stylised and timeless collection of two hundred fascinating backstage images capturing actors in preparation before and between scenes on a performance night.
In 2015 Valentin brought his photography closer in terms of subject to his paintings. Inspired by figures from Ancient Greek mythology he compiled a list of a deities and set about portraying the spirit that each represents. With emotional projection a key model requirement, he mainly chose to shoot with actors under direction.
'Lament' from La Nevera Triptych [2025 treatment]
Striking Coins was an initiative by Italian erotic filmmakers Impudens, to create content for virtual reality site Second Life. In collaboration with director Luca Cattaneo and musician Piero Arancia, Valentin expressed his exploration of sex and sexuality through micro-shorts of music, film and poetry.
Filmed at his former casa in Valencia, Spain La Nevera Triptych is an expressionist montage portraying a troubled artist seeking to unburden his anguish. Rendered in similar style to his photographic work, the original forty minute version received its debut public screening at London's Shortwave Cinema.
Pain My Portrait repeats the format of earlier 'micro-short' film work but this time Valentin explores the symbiotic relationship between his art, music, image making and poetry.
Valentin's expressionistic shorts led to collaboration with Portuguese cinematographer Francisco D. Oliveira. Together with Lab Rat Studios they produced music videos and a series of arthouse portrait documentaries including ‘The Woman, The Machine’ and ‘Art Without Turmoil’, the latter of which featured at London’s premier ShortCutz film festival.
Valentin experimented with 4 track recording with various 'art school' rock bands in the 1980s, and later developed his own techniques to incorporate live performance playback. With the birth of the internet he began composing and recording expressive soundscapes of piano, synthesiser and spoken poetry to accompany his visual content, and with later advances in digital workstations and consumer software, this developed into writing and record compositions for filmmaking projects.
From 2019, he began producing music entertainment shows and in creating backing tracks for these, took a more in-depth look at DAW capabilities. What began with producing a wide range of cover versions, evolved into an experiment with songwriting. In collaboration with musician Will Hughes, he produced an album of their original material, released it in 2024 as 'Live from the Opium Cafe'.
Inspired by Gialli, an Italian 20th century genre of pulp crime and mystery that often included shocking elements of horror and eroticism. It takes its name from the publisher's trademark yellow (giallo) cover. Not destined for the bookshelf, the cheaply printed paperbacks and were produced literally for the trash. Featuring stark tales from the perspective of a tense adolescent, 250 copies of Memory Lane Massacre were abandoned at stations and arts venues in London. Monitoring of its ISBN have found copies in second hand bookshops as far as the USA.
In The Shadow Of The Gods is a catalogue published to accompany Valentin's 2017 London exhibition. Featuring poetic and philosophical passages that borrow from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Jung, their thoughts express something of template for finding spiritual fulfilment in a world without god.
Scheduled to be published in 2027 to mark thirty years since his first exhibition, Lustra is an autobiographical account of Valentin's life - one defined by distinct periods of five years (a Lustrum) in which change itself acts as a catalyst for personal and artistic growth. Intended to reveal both the deepest darkness and the brightest light, it is a retrospective view of Valentin's pursuit of purpose and inner peace through a life as an artist.
Site copy Rivkah Efron 2025