Robert Dukes: New Paintings

     Bernard Jacobson Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of British artist Robert Dukes. The exhibition marks Dukes' first solo show in six years and his first with the gallery. The new paintings featured in the exhibition showcase an expansion from the artist’s previous works, both in scale and in the pictorial elements within each composition.
     Dukes trained at the Grimsby School of Art and then the Slade School of Fine Art. His teachers included artists Euan Uglow and Patrick George. Their influence, alongside his early grounding in art history, shaped the artist’s understanding of painting as a means of absorbing the ideas of those who came before him, and the methods behind them, to arrive at his own visual language. The paintings in this exhibition represent the fullest expression of that voice. 
     Still-lifes make up most of the exhibition. Each one demonstrates the artist’s current primary ambition to create an ‘analogy of forms’ within his compositions. By this, Dukes means to capture visual and spatial connections between elements in his paintings that generally lack inherent relationships. According to the artist: “Ideally, all the objects should relate to each other, lock into an overall unity whilst keeping their own individual character.” 
     No singular object identifies as a focal point within a composition, with even the shapes that make up the negative space between objects serving an equal importance. In Quince and Beer Bottle, for instance, Dukes maintains the shape and form of each object while subtly matching their colour palettes and integrating their shadows. 
     The new works also showcase Dukes’ expansion beyond still-life’s general format of tightly grouping objects in the centre of a composition. Several still-lifes feature objects that peter out towards the edges, even engage with them—in Pears on Purple, Dukes partially crops the mug, bowl, and shadow of the plate to accentuate their place within the reality of the surrounding room.
     Rather than tightly controlling his arrangements as if a stage set, Dukes works to make his still-lifes look like a moment in time captured from his perspective. That is especially the case for Still Life with Posca Pen I, II, and III, an arrangement the artist naturally came across in his studio. 
     The objects Dukes paints range from deeply personal—like the small wooden duck found in Barry’s Duck, a treasured possession belonging to his late uncle—to more mundane—like the empty cardboard paint boxes in The Piper Mug and Pears on Purple. Despite their differences, Dukes observes and confronts each in his studio every day. They all serve as a reflection of the artist’s lived experience. With each still-life painted from observation, and each grounded in reality, the paintings within this exhibition are among the artist’s most personal and expansive. 
     The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by art critic and writer Andrew Lambirth.