Berlin Mitte | ArtRegion: Berlin, Mitte

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Lee Simmonds: Bloomin ‚Eck

30. April – 4. Juni 2022

A figure sits in an embroidered armchair against a purple curtain patterned with roses. It is, in some ways, a familiar, almost stereotypical middle-class domestic setting and yet, something’s amiss: where the figure’s head should be a white orchid is growing, its tendrils creating a spindly bridge between a vase and person’s neck; their hands are translucent and smokey; jagged chunks of earth hang suspended in the air. Bloomin ‘eck, the title painting of British artist Lee Simmonds’ solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Berlin, welcomes us into a world where nothing is quite as it seems.

Simmonds’ compositions typically emerge through a deep engagement with the process of painting – his tools and materials. With this particular show, the artist found himself reflecting on some of his earlier works and how and why his practice had evolved in a certain direction. ‘I was struck by the intensity of detail in those images, which is something I’ve tried to avoid more recently because I tend to be working from my imagination and at a much larger scale, but I was curious to see if I could bring some of that back into my compositions,’ he says. Simmonds began by layering paint onto the canvas to build up a thick, textured surface which could support more precisely defined marks while also retaining a smooth fluidity. This is perhaps most clearly visible in the painting Untitled (dog) which depicts a figure lying in the grass between two trees. While the textures of the different elements are vividly rendered – the fabric, the grass, the bark of the tree – to create a powerful sense of tactility, the edges of the forms appear translucent and permeable. The figure’s face is smudged in the sky and the dog, at the forefront of the painting, seems to emerge from red earth that stains the grass amid bright flecks of canary yellow while, two smooth, shining spherical shapes – heads? – float like meteors.