Dexter Dalwood's paintings celebrate and interrogate the history of the medium. They demonstrate an awareness of the continued significance of painting as a means of communicating the ways in which we experience our everyday existence. Dalwood is first and foremost interested in painting as a conceptual practice: a meta-awareness of painting as language. He crafts narratives of memory that bring together the past, present and future in a single image.

Dexter Dalwood's paintings celebrate and interrogate the history of the medium. They demonstrate an awareness of the continued significance of painting as a means of communicating the ways in which we experience our everyday existence. Dalwood is first and foremost interested in painting as a conceptual practice: a meta-awareness of painting as language. He crafts narratives of memory that bring together the past, present and future in a single image. He brings to the art world the essence of that eccentric rigour. His talk and his paintings are full of ruthless, self-effacing resolve to hone it down, fit it together, find the groove and move things right along.

—Dave Hickey, Dexter Dalwood Covers the Classics (2002)

In recent years there has been a pronounced shift in Dalwood's approach to making paintings as he moves away from the logic of representation, and what had become his signature visual quotes from art history, to something more distilled, intuitive and pared down. He has begun to explore the limits of painting language and to consider where the medium itself sits at this moment in time.

Press release courtesy Simon Lee Gallery.