James Dearlove

Gertrude and Galerie PCP are pleased to present The Trilling Wire, a solo exhibition featuring new paintings by British artist James Dearlove. This exhibition marks Dearlove's first major presentation in Paris and represents a significant evolution in his exploration of desire, transgression, and the liminal spaces between human experience and the natural world.

Taking its title from T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton, the first poem in The Four Quartets, The Trilling Wire presents a twilit, hallucinatory world where bodies coalesce with their surroundings and chimeras emerge from the interplay of light and shadow. Dearlove's latest body of work intensifies the dreamlike qualities that have long characterized his practice, introducing new themes of the hunt and the carnivalesque that amplify his central preoccupations with desire and disquietude. "The hunt, though often hidden, remains a primal force in modern life," explains Dearlove. "It embodies both the desire of the hunter and disquietude of being hunted. These dynamics shape not only sexual politics and consumption patterns but also ripple through human relationships and social hierarchies."

The exhibition features paintings that draw inspiration from Dutch still-life traditions, particularly the vanitas genre, which Dearlove encountered during his residency at The Clover Mill inn the Netherlands. However, rather than focusing on the transience of earthly pleasures, the artist employs allegorical imagery to create new poetic meanings within his distinctive compositional approach.

Dearlove's technique—assembling compositions from squares of newspaper, newsprint, and printer paper stuck onto canvas—creates a distinctly cubist aesthetic that fragments and interrupts the painted surface. This method reflects his deep engagement with cubist principles of multiple perspectives and simultaneity, echoing T.S. Eliot's own literary techniques of fragmentation and juxtaposition.

"Like Eliot, I assemble disparate voices, images, and references to form a cohesive yet multifaceted whole," notes the artist. "The 'trilling wire' itself evokes the plucked string of a musical instrument or bow, communication networks, electrical wires, nets—all things pertinent to our times—as well as the taut, humming living force running through everything."

Art critic Alastair Sooke, writing about New Contemporaries 2024, has noted that Dearlove's work is "haunted by several painters from Francis Bacon to Michael Armitage," positioning the artist within a rich lineage of British painterly imagination that confronts modern anxieties through layered, poetic forms.

The carnivalesque elements in these new works serve as a counterpoint to the primal urgency of the hunt, creating spaces where societal norms are suspended and traditional power structures challenged. Through laughter, dancing, and controlled chaos, Dearlove creates alternative spaces for new voices and meanings to emerge, all while maintaining the erotic intimacy and transgressive potential that has defined his practice.

Drawing from his experiences as a queer person navigating both urban and rural environments, Dearlove continues to explore the in-between worlds where transformation becomes possible. Hispaintings capture what he describes as "the fragility and intensity of existence," creating works that resonate with symbolic meaning while leaving room for ambiguity and introspection.

The Trilling Wire presents 10 new paintings, ranging from intimate works on board to large-scale composite canvases that demonstrate the full scope of Dearlove's innovative approach to contemporary painting.

James Dearlove is a British painter whose work explores themes of desire, identity, and transformation through a distinctive practice that combines traditional painting techniques withinnovative compositional strategies. His work has been exhibited across the UK and internationally, with recent presentations including group shows "Mythic Manifest" at Love Waxes Cold in 2025, “New Contemporaries" at Camden Art Gallery in 2024, "EXH 13" with Floorr Magazine (online) in 2024,“Pourquoi London" with Gertrude Art x Canopy Collections at 4 Princelet Str in 2024, solo presentation in “Platform" curated by Gemma Rolls Bentley at The London Art Fair 2024, solo show "Tales of the City, Tales of the Sea"in 2023 with BWG Gallery at 13 Soho Square, “Ingram Collection Presentation” at The British Art Fair at Saatchi Gallery in 2022 and “Ingram Prize Finalists Show” at Unit 1 Gallery / Workshop in 2021. In 2024 Dearlove completed residencies at The Clover Mill in the Netherlands and at Coulston House in Scotland, which directly influenced the body of work presentedin The Trilling Wire.