10 July – 23 August 2008
69 South Audley Street, London W1
For his second solo show at Sadie Coles HQ, Israeli artist Avner Ben-Gal presents a series of paintings of deep imaginative consciousness. Shades of toxic green, orange, and grey dominate his palette creating smoky and unnerving scenes through which figures and motifs emerge: a tentative soldier, a tottering old woman, a grinning wolf-like creature. If at first these characters seem menacing, then time in their company reveals more affable aspects. The surreal prevails as an egg-shaped fruit under a pale Northern-Light sky sprouts roots and an idiot-savant monkey executes a mathematical equation. Questions of painting and illustration are posed as text appears in Ben-Gal’s work more than ever before.