Rowdy Warren | 'Untitled, 2020' | 90x150cm

Code: MARW20111

Artist: Rowdy Warren

Title: Untitled

Medium: Acrylic On Canvas

Size: 90x150cm

Year: 2020

Rowdy Warren works in a surrealist pop register, and this large canvas shows him at full tilt. A single wide open eye sits near the top, staring out from a tangle of black ribbons that loop and coil across the whole surface. The pupil is sharp and grey blue. Everything else seems to be caught in its orbit.

Below the eye, forms tumble and interlock. There is a dark heavy shape like a hooded head, its mouth stitched shut with small marks. A perforated sphere floats mid canvas, almost mechanical, almost seed like. Curling volutes echo the shells and smoke of early Surrealist painting. Warren keeps the palette tight. Chalky whites, soft creams, deep charcoal, and slate greys do all the heavy lifting.

The lower half opens into architectural fragments. Angled planes suggest a floor or a stage. A small arrow points down toward a red marked circle at the very base of the composition, like a target or a hidden clue. The eye above seems to be watching that spot.

Warren has a knack for building images that feel like dreams remembered in pieces. Nothing quite resolves. Faces bleed into objects. Objects grow limbs. The line work is confident and calligraphic, drawn with the fluency of an artist who trusts his hand. There is humour in the shapes, and also unease.

Hung on a wall, the painting rewards slow looking. New creatures appear inside the negative spaces. A profile here, a fin there, a curled tongue behind the eye. It is a work about seeing, and about being seen, staged in black and white with the theatricality of a stripped back cartoon.