David Musgrave creates understated yet poignant works which demand a level of scrutiny and contemplation rarely encouraged in most forms of contemporary culture.

The speculative potential of visual experience lies at the very heart of Musgrave's practice, and the rewards for the viewer lie in an intellectual engagement with the games of illusion played by the artist, as well as an enjoyable aesthetic encounter. Yet the means are simple; most of the materials Musgrave uses might be supplied at primary school - paper, plasticine, graphite pencil and paint.

We all share a drive to recognise the human in what we see, and he pushes this desire to its limits. His anthropomorphic forms are invariably created from an unseen original, then enlarged and translated into different media. The actual attempt to represent, and the viewer's instinctive response to this, is what fascinates Musgrave.

It is not necessarily what is being presented, but the cognitive process through which we recognise - or misrecognise - what is happening that offers a key to the subject of the work. For Musgrave, the consistent references to something outside of the work itself - the human form, the activity of making - is vital as a way to explore both issues of representation and the complexities of a formal process.

Since Musgrave makes drawings freehand there is a level of interpretation and therefore error. A drawing rendered realistically is inevitably slightly altered from its original image, thus entrapping the viewer in the gap between real experience and imagination.

The wide range of media used by Musgrave allows him to experiment, at times manipulating a substance, at others allowing it to behave according to its natural properties. In a delicate balance of scale, medium and process, each work demands attention and consideration, and in taking the time the viewer slowly unravels the exquisite tension between figuration and abstraction, identification and deception, materiality and immateriality.

Musgrave (born 1973) studied at Wimbledon College of Art and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. He is currently exhibiting at the Arnolfini, Bristol (16 May - 6 July 2003), and has recently shown at the Mark Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles with Roger Hiorns (2003) and at Transmission, Glasgow (2002).

He has had solo exhibitions at greengrassi, London (2001 and 2000) and at Duncan Cargill Gallery, London (1998). He has been in numerous international group exhibitions including Casino 2001, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2001) and the British Art Show 5 (2000). He lives and works in London.