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Dexter Dalwood

An avowed master of contemporary history painting for over three decades, Dexter Dalwood translates real-world events into imagined and composite landscapes, furthering the language and narratives of his chosen medium, while acknowledging the weight of all that has come before. An acute understanding and referencing of past artistic genres has recently given way to a style all his own: one that evades figurative tropes, in favour of uninhabited and uncertain spatial concerns, shifting scales and compressed picture planes. The artist’s famed, fictional interiors of Kurt Cobain’s Greenhouse (2000) or Wittgenstein’s Bathroom (2001), executed with knowing painterly flourishes and references – ranging from Willem de Kooning and Clyfford Still to Manet, Munch and Bellini – have since been concentrated down into constricted views from inside an airplane or else expanded through windows into Dalwoodesque spaces that are at one further remove from any original source material. The increasing presence of textual or numerical impositions on the canvases, in addition to abstract passages of gestural and frontal mark making, likewise signifies a distillation and honing of this practice.

Sites of trauma depicted in earlier works such as Brian Jones' Swimming Pool (2000) and the imagined view out of W.G. Sebald’s wrecked car in The Crash (2008), for example, have been replaced with an unnamed sense of foreboding, perhaps evoked by a still from a 24-hour newsfeed, or by the myriad potentialities of a mirrored puddle or a glimpsed ceiling rose. Dalwood’s fragmentary, sample-heavy aesthetic, which often begins with pencil or cut paper studies, goes far beyond a locus for postmodern quotation and displacement. Instead, his paintings enact a dizzying layering of the thought processes behind painting, on top of the vast back catalogue of art history, added to various ongoing bodies of research, as well as an appreciation of the importance of time and memory as touchstones for creating newly epochal images.

Dexter Dalwood (born Bristol, UK, 1960) is based in Mexico City. In 2017 he undertook a residency in Oaxaca and made a series titled An Inadequate Painted History of Mexico on his return to London, which has since featured in the touring show, 'Esto No Me Pertenece' at Centro de las Artes San Agustín, Oaxaca, Mexico and Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City, Mexico (2021-22). Dalwood’s other major solo museum shows include: Kunsthaus Centre PasquArt, Biel, Switzerland (2013); CAC Málaga, Spain (2010); FRAC Champagne-Ardennes, Reims, France (2010) and Tate, St. Ives, UK (2010). His work has featured in recent group exhibitions including: ‘The Paradoxes of Internationalism. Part I’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (until 1 October, 2023); 'You to Me, Me to You', A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa (until 18 Nov 2023); ‘Modern Media Networks: Painting and Mass Media’, Tate Modern, London, UK (2020); ‘Hello World. Revising a Collection’, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2018); ‘Michael Jackson: On the Wall’, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK touring to Grand Palais, Paris, France, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany and Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (all 2018-19). His first solo show with Lisson Gallery will open in London in September 2024.

 

Recent, Current and Forthcoming Projects

'José María Velasco: A View of Mexico' curated by Dexter Dalwood and Daniel Sobrino Ralston, The National Gallery, London, UK (29 March – 17 August, 2025)

'From Dreams You Wake Up' at Galerie Nordenhake, Mexico City, Mexico (31 August – 19 October, 2024)

'Accordion Fields' at Lisson Gallery, London, UK (23 February – 4 May 2024)

Brian Jones' Swimming Pool

Dexter Dalwood
Brian Jones' Swimming Pool

2000
Oil on canvas
275 x 219 cm (108 1/4 x 86 1/4 in)

Kurt Cobain’s Greenhouse

Dexter Dalwood
Kurt Cobain’s Greenhouse

2000
Oil on canvas
214 x 259 cm (82 1/4 x 102 in)

Wittgenstein’s Bathroom

Dexter Dalwood
Wittgenstein’s Bathroom

2001
Oil on canvas
235 x 280 cm (92 1/2 x 110 in)

The Crash

Dexter Dalwood
The Crash

2008
Oil on canvas
150 x 207 cm (59 x 81 1/2 in)

Wall

Dexter Dalwood
Wall

2017
Oil on canvas
130 x 97 cm (51 1/8 x 381/4 in)

Imperial Cabin

Dexter Dalwood
Imperial Cabin

2017
Oil on canvas
182 x 228 cm (71 5/8 x 89 3/4 in)

An Inadequate Painted History of Mexico I

Dexter Dalwood
An Inadequate Painted History of Mexico I

2017
Oil and acrylic on canvas
150 x 186 cm (59 x 73 1/4 in)

Think With the Heart (Mexico)

Dexter Dalwood
Think With the Heart (Mexico)

2017
Oil on canvas
66 x 55 cm (26 x 21 5/8 in)

1910

Dexter Dalwood
1910

2018
Book pages, acrylic and oil on canvas
150 x 202 cm (59 x 79 1/2 in)

1910

Dexter Dalwood
1910

Installation view, Esto No Me Pertenece, Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City, Mexico 2021-22

00:43

Dexter Dalwood
00:43

2018
Oil and chalk on canvas 
124 x 101 cm (48 7/8 x 39 3/4 in)

Hard 2

Dexter Dalwood
Hard 2

2019
Oil on canvas
162 x 130 cm (63 3/4 x 51 1/8 in)

An Inadequate Painted History of Mexico X

Dexter Dalwood
An Inadequate Painted History of Mexico X

2020
Oil on canvas
150 x 186 cm (59 x 73 1/4 in)

1968

Dexter Dalwood
1968

2020
Oil on canvas
150 x 202 cm (59 x 79 1/2 in)

1968

Dexter Dalwood
1968

Installation view, Esto No Me Pertenece, Centro de las Artes San Agustín, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2022

1994

Dexter Dalwood
1994

2020
Oil on canvas
124.5 x 101 cm (49 x 39 3/4 in)

2059 (Spilt Saturn)

Dexter Dalwood
2059 (Spilt Saturn)

2020
Oil on canvas
60 x 72 cm (23 5/8 x 28 3/8 in)

2059 (bath)

Dexter Dalwood
2059 (bath)

2021
Oil on canvas
60 x 72 cm (23 5/8 x 28 3/8 in)
 

Crosswalk

Dexter Dalwood
Crosswalk

2022
Oil on canvas
90 x 120 cm (35 3/8 x 47 1/4 in)

New

Dexter Dalwood
New

2023
Oil on canvas
114.6 x 89.9 x 4.8 cm (45 1/8 x 35 3/8 x 1 7/8 in)

New

Dexter Dalwood
New

2023
Oil on canvas
114.6 x 89.9 x 4.8 cm (45 1/8 x 35 3/8 x 1 7/8 in)

Exhibitions

  1. Dexter Dalwood: English Painting - current exhibition

    Dexter Dalwood: English Painting

    27 September – 9 November 2024

  2. Accordion Fields - past exhibition

    Accordion Fields

    23 February – 4 May 2024

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