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26/06/25 - 12/07/25
Touch Grass
Touch Grass
26/06/25 - 12/07/25
Gordon Dalton~Demi Danka~Patricia Geyerhahn~Caitlin Heffernan~Mikkel Kaldal~Hyunah Koh~Gena Milanesi
The artists in Touch Grass channel a collective desire for groundedness, as delicate, tactile and ephemeral forces converge - echoing the contours of landscape and the ever-shifting terrain of memory. The phrase itself - contemporary slang calling for disconnection from the digital and a return to the physical - takes on a newly poetic and painterly resonance in the context of the show. In contrast to the sleek, frictionless logic of the screen, Touch Grass returns to the organic, as painting becomes both ground and grounding. Rather than echoing the polished precision of algorithmic imagery, the artists embrace disruption, sedimentation and decay. Their works unfold through gestures that are at once physical and metaphysical - shaped by erosion, mutation and instinct. Through these acts of material and conceptual excavation, they reject the manicured aesthetics of the internet in favour of textured, unstable surfaces rich with tension, emotion and presence.~~Gordon Dalton’s paintings are imbued with a melancholic romanticism, oscillating between memory and invention as paint becomes memory’s residue. Through a vocabulary shaped by Fauvism and the Nabis, Dalton constructs intimate landscapes that collapse space, time and perspective. These imagined yet familiar places flicker between longing and belonging - places remembered, reassembled or wholly invented. His work becomes as much about forgetting as it is about recalling, a deliberate unraveling of specificity in favour of the emotional weight of the landscape.~~Demi Danka’s works vibrate with the urgency of elemental transformation. Her use of light-sensitive surfaces, volatile materials and chemical processes summons time not just as subject, but as co-creator. Her paintings are moments suspended before collapse, marked by the tension between fragility and endurance. This alchemy of light, water and gravity echoes natural cycles of destruction and regeneration, drawing the viewer into an existential meditation on resilience.~~Patricia Geyerhahn’s quietly powerful paintings delve into the ambiguity of identity and perception. Drawing on her own transitory upbringing, her minimal, symbol-laden compositions conjure a space where viewers project their own interpretations. Negative space becomes fertile ground, allowing simplified natural forms to shift in and out of legibility. Geyerhahn’s restrained palette and sensitivity to light infuse her works with a contemplative stillness, where emptiness is not a void, but rather a space of possibility. ~~Caitlin Heffernan imagines the planet as a sentient force - disruptive, unruly and regenerative. Her root-inspired psychological landscapes teem with unseen energies, inspired by rhizomes, stalactites, and subterranean worlds. In her hands, painting becomes a ritual of becoming - a shedding and re-forming of self in dialogue with non-human agency. Viewing painting as an extension of growth and decay, Heffernan invites us to consider an ecological consciousness embedded within the surface of her canvases.~~Mikkel Kaldal investigates memory as a mutable archive, where images, patterns and text coalesce into personal mythologies. His deconstructed visual narratives blur the distinction between fact and fiction, memory and imagination. Kaldal’s interest in photography’s historic claim to truth becomes a platform for its dismantling, as he reconfigures found imagery into tactile, textural, shifting memories.~~Hyunah Koh views painting as a site of bodily memory. She invites the viewer not just to look, but to feel, stepping into the layered, living surface of the work. Her richly layered surfaces - built from the seasonal and sensorial memories of her Korean upbringing - radiate warmth and invitation, where gesture becomes intimacy, and touch becomes meaning.~~Gena Milanesi’s kinetic canvases are energetic battlegrounds between chaos and control. Her gestural layering of oil, charcoal and oil stick yields surfaces that are dense, raw and alive with contradiction. Her work pulses with a cinematic intensity, where marks oscillate between violence and tenderness. Nature here is a metaphor for emotional volatility: unpredictable yet cyclical, and determinately alive.~~In Touch Grass, painting becomes a site for both ecological reflection and expressive processes. While the works draw from the organic, the artists remain equally as grounded in the materiality of the medium itself. Through gestures that prioritise presence over permanence, the exhibition engages with a slower, more embodied mode of image-making - in stark contrast to the hyper speed of the digital age. Instead of turning from the natural world, these practices anchor the image in the physical - realigning surface with sensation and material with meaning.
Gordon Dalton
Untitled, 2025~Acrylic and pastel on canvas, 30.5x25.5cm
Mikkel Kaldal
Flowers (Reminiscent), 2025 ~Cotton canvas, gesso, gel medium, photo transfer, 60x50cm
Demi Danka
Amongst the Buoyancy, 2025 ~Light-sensitive emulsion paper, chemicals, light and water on aluminium, 127x110cm
Gena Milanesi
Neon Baby, 2025~ Oil, oil stick and charcoal on canvas, 100x80cm
Hyunah Koh
Warm Breeze Blows, 2025 ~Mixed media on canvas, 166x125cm
Patricia Geyerhahn
TBT, 2025 ~Oil on linen, 122x102cm
Patricia Geyerhahn
Becoming, 2025~Oil on linen in artist’s frame, 30x41cm [36x46cm framed]
Mikkel Kaldal
Flowers (Unspoken), 2025~ Cotton canvas, gesso, gel medium, photo transfer, 60x50cm
Caitlin Heffernan
Underworld, 2025~Oil on canvas, 180x200cm
Demi Danka
The Unholding, 2025 ~Light-sensitive emulsion paper, chemicals, light and water on aluminium, 30x25cm
Gordon Dalton
The Architect, 2025~Acrylic and pastel on canvas, 30.5x25.5cm
Chilli
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London, NW3 3QE
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