CHARLIE ISOE

Charlie Isoe was born in Perth in 1981 and grew up between Australia and Vancouver. He left school at sixteen and spent the following years immersed in graffiti, skateboarding, travel and life on the street before returning to complete his education in fine art. He later returned to life on the streets and disappeared from public view in early 2016. His whereabouts remain unknown.

His paintings draw from personal experience and close observations of his immediate social surroundings. Human and animal faces fracture and emerge through rough layers of paint while scratches and erasures interrupt the surface. The works are not literal representations but direct and instinctive expressions of lives, encounters and psychological states.

Circle Culture presented Isoe in the 2008 Berliner Strasse exhibition and later in his Berlin solo exhibition Will Be Home Late, Leave the Light On. A singular and deeply gifted artist, he remains profoundly missed by the gallery and by those who knew and worked with him.