Studio Voltaire to present an exhibition of new works by Jake Grewal (b.1994, London) for his first institutional exhibition in London.
Primary to this exhibition will be a new panoramic painting, which marks Grewal’s most ambitiously scaled work to date. The curved canvas, almost six metres in length, gives substantial movement and momentum to Grewal’s core thematics, expanding his painterly explorations of transformation and time.
Grewal draws from Western canons of painting, deftly harnessing the language of Romanticism and suffusing them with a queer gaze. Within his scenes, the artist frequently pictures nude figures, nearly always male and often based on his own image, to convey a sense of human fragility and communion with nature. Equally, his work is underpinned by a rigorous drawing practice, and his charcoal and pencil sketches vary from depictions of vivid, verdant forests to charred, clouded landscapes.
Grewal has produced a significant new series of paintings and drawings for this exhibition, which develop from his travels in India and Cornwall in 2024, where he focussed on translating light, form and colour in the surrounding landscapes.
For the commission at Studio Voltaire, Grewal embarked on a sustained period in India, his first time visiting the country, travelling through southern Goa, Kerala; the northern cities of Varanasi, Amritsar and Delhi; and the mountainous areas of Himachal Pradesh. The artist then spent a month-long period exploring coastal landscapes at Porthmeor Studios, St Ives. As the oldest working artists’ studios in the
country, Porthmeor is renowned for its history of hosting artists who had a decisive effect on the development of modern painting in Britain. Grewal was resident in Porthmeor’s storied Studio 5, previously occupied by Ben Nicholson, followed by Patrick Heron, two of the most influential painters of their generation.
The artist’s explorations of self find form in compositions distilled from an expansive personal library of visual references, shifting from art historical and cinematic sources to collected photographs and family images. While Grewal’s new body of work draws a line through to histories of plein-air painting, his works
depicting shoresides often appear more evocative of an interior, psychological world than based in any one location.
Jake Grewal Under The Same Sky 15th January–13th April 2025 Studio Voltaire
Private view: Tuesday 14th January 2025, 6PM-8PM
About the artist
Jake Grewal (b. 1994, London) lives and works in London. In Grewal’s paintings and drawings, figures merge with their surrounding landscapes, seemingly unmoored from time and space. Often nude and based on the artist’s own image, the figures are situated against dramatic sunsets or gazing into verdant green pools. Time and its transition play a central role with the same figure often repeated within a scene. Narratives are left open-ended and the viewer is encouraged to project their own conclusions onto the dramatic tableaus. Informed by photographs that Grewal has taken of himself outdoors, there is an underlying desire for ambiguity and abstraction within his figures.
Drawing is central to Grewal’s practice and it usually the departure point from which his larger paintings emerge. Using predominantly charcoal, Grewal insistently repeats figures and scenes, often in different mediums and scales until his narratives are realised. Landscape and figure merge together and become one. Figures and trees dissolve and reappear on a journey together, sometimes cohabitating, sometimes
being consumed, but always investigating the artist’s fascination with the passing of time.
Solo exhibitions include: Some days I feel more alive, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, England (2023); Now I Know You I Am Older, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, England (2022). Group exhibitions include: Voyage, Morena di Luna, Hove, England (2024); Drawing Biennial 2024, Drawing Room, London, England (2024); Interior, Michael Werner Gallery, London, England (2022); Shifting Waters, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, India (2022); Drawing Attention: Emerging British Artists, The British Museum, London, England (2022); Dissolving Realms, curated by Katy Hessel, Kasmin Gallery, New York NY (2022); Drawing Biennial 2021, Drawing Room, London, England (2021); On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, India (2021); Deity, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2020); Everyday is Sunday, UTA Artists Space, Los Angeles CA (2020); No Time Like The Present, Public Gallery, London, England (2020).
