What's On

Reflecting a resugence of painting and a sense of shared mission in the artistic communities of London, Berlin and New York this comprehensive exhibition pulls together several threads to see if any sense can be made out of them. The curatorial conceit of stacking the paintings high up all over the walls in an old fashioned salon style works well, encouraging interplay between what is essentially an eclectic mix of individual artists' visions. A startled looking Kicked Cat by Martin Maloney (pictured) faces Peter Davies' cool semi abstract Grey and Mainly Neutral Colours. Between them these two works express the different parameters that almost everyone featured is working by. Ironic or at least carefully guarded representations stand against painterly abstraction. The formal values of the past, such as colour relations and rhythmic drawing, must either be admitted for what they are or else somehow smuggled in under cover of some wider project.
 
Many well known names show signature works, Glenn Brown has a head, John Currin a couple of busty ladies, Philip Ackerman a hallucinogenic self portrait. If you aren't familiar with an artists' output then the odd painting might leave you mystified, Karen Kilmnik's small baroque stage set really needs to be seen alongside more of her work. But Richard Woods gets away with it. His characteristic printed fake wood grain is here twisted and turned to draw a portrait of "Durer's Mother" just as the artist might have done had he been living in London today. The difference is that these painters are full of hope and optimism
cowboy.