A couple of shows just opened at Pilar Corrias and their bigger Conduit Street Gallery. Pilar Corrias have rather healthy spaces at both ends of Saville Row, adjacent to Cork Street, Cork Street in turn was the main reason for being in the area last week, the first day of the Lucy Jones show at Flowers. yeah, I know, a whole week has flown by since both the shows at Flowers and Pilar Corrias opened, things are slacking in terms of the art coverage around here, are we tired of art, is art tired of us? We probably do go to more art shows than most people, we probably do go to more art shows than it’s healthy to go to? There is always another art exhibition though and both new shows at Pilar Corrias were intriguing enough to drop in on on the way to Cork Street and “in this new body of work, flowers lean, stretch and entangle; plants creep and communicate in hushed tones”…

The James Owens exhibition, Allus Do It Fer Thissen, has just opened in the basement of Pilar Corrias Gallery underneath a rather striking show called Perpetual Motion Machines, a group exhibition featuring work by Pacita Abad, Loie Hollowell, Christina Quarles, Tschabalala Self and Mickalene Thomas, more of that in a minute, James Owens is downstairs with his narratives. 

James Owens (b. 1995, Middlesbrough) is a painter currently based in south-east London, he’s dealing with familiar inner city themes, those plants that grow through the cracks, those leaves that take over (familiar themes around here anyway), plants that creep and dance, they communicate with, well with themselves? With whoever wishes to listen to their shapes? They grow in unlikely settings, pushing up through cracks and stretching towards the sun and James Owens explore all this drama is in his own almost graphic way.

The work here doesn’t feel like the work of an artist from somewhere like Middlesbrough (a place I imagine to be mostly overgrown abandoned industrial landscape and rusty transported bridges, not that I’ve been since they closed Ayresome Park), this doesn’t feel like the work of an artist who now lives and works in inner city south-east London, that’s an observation rather than a criticism, there’s no reason what art should feel like it has come from or been made in a particular time of place. And yes, it it wasn’t on this scale some of it might well be dangerously close to greeting card illustrations, but the work is on this scale, these are big reverential (as reverential as almost everything is in a more formal gallery like this) art gallery sized pieces and we’re viewing them in the required silence and decent light of such a space. In here, we’re allowed to view the fact that as a small flower tenderly blossoms, another wilts or that a curling tendril soon becomes a parasite in a reverential environment. We’re informed both of and by paintings that tread gently upon this balance between strength and weakness, the balance of being ‘nice’ and well maybe not quite so nice. Do we ever see a mass of growth and think of the battle? Do we see wildflowers in glorious full bloom and read it as a fight between them for survival  or maybe as being “bound by an urgency to shield one another from an ambiguous threat; at others, they appear adrift, searching without knowing what for”? here’s another #43SecondFilm…. Do you need me to tell you if i liked it or not? Does that matter? Does any of this matter?  I did like it as it happens, but these are things that I address anyway, the life and death of plants, of leaves and the things they grow on… 

Upstairs at Pilar Corrias is entertaining, upstairs in the big big high-ceiling white wall space with the windows and light and street life passing by, the show is entertaining, striking, exciting. A group exhibition “taking as its starting point the concept that perpetual motion machines create energy indefinitely, this exhibition brings together works that explore the tension between movement and stillness in painting. Painting, though traditionally a still medium, has long sought to capture movement, energy and the fluidity of thought and emotion. Within these new and historical works, there is an extraction and projection of energy that has been distilled to communicate the intricate lives of women. Unique approaches to painterly techniques fuse, playing with pace and impressions of movement”. A group exhibition, that, as we already said, features work by Pacita Abad, Loie Hollowell, Christina Quarles, Tschabalala Self and Mickalene Thomas.  

I must admit I hadn’t seen or sensed a tension, certainly not a tension between movement and stillness in painting, I had immediately been excited by the whole exhibition as one bright bold thing – pretty colours bringing out the art magpie in me maybe? I really like spinning around this big room, walking backwards and forwards, the sight lines between pieces pulling me in, I like this show rather a lot, I’m not sensing a tension, I’m not really sensing anything other than exciting pieces of work, the sense of enjoyment maybe (or maybe I shouldn’t admit to being that shallow about it?), I really am enjoying being in here, I probably overstayed my welcome. I mean yes, when you do filter everything else out and look at that those two big Tschabalala Self pieces and especially Madame, you can’t help to be drawn in to her layers and yes, her tensions, and hey, group shows mostly make me want to go explore the artists that jump out more. I really like this show, I don’t want to figure it all out right now, I just want to enjoy it, I’ll maybe go back later and search for more… here’s another #43SecondFilm…     

Pilar Corrias is at 51 Conduit Street, London W1S 2YT. Both shows are on until September 9th 2025. The gallery is open Tuesday–Friday: 10am–6pm and Saturday: 11am–6pm.

Previously

ORGAN THING: And still the around about way to Break The Glass, this time via Pierre Knop’s opening of Fireflies Under Fever Sky at Pilar Corrias Gallery just around the corner (on a corner) and a little bit up the road…

As always do please click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show…