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Open: Thu-Sat 12-10pm

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Artists: Ṣọlá Olúlòde - Cecilia Reeve

Twilight Contemporary presents 'Gossamer,' a duo presentation by London based artists Ṣọlá Olúlòde and Cecilia Reeve. Inspired by temporal moments, together these artists offer us intimate snapshots into serene, dreamlike worlds.

Gossamer, the exhibition’s namesake, is defined in the Cambridge dictionary as the very thin thread that spiders produce to make webs. Threads, taken in isolation are thin, but together strong. The weaving together of lives is what this exhibition epitomises, where the touch of a hand embodies a sense of togetherness.

Ṣọlá Olúlòde’s work celebrates relationships and their intimacies by centring the representation and visibility of Black Queer lived experience. Olúlòde's canvases are dyed and layered with paint and pastel creating tactile surfaces with figures depicted as always on the move, plunging or gliding through water. This movement, this energy, build a euphoric tension which culminates in the embrace of figures. There is a real sense of the beauty in the intimate coming together of bodies.

Cecilia Reeve works in a more hushed register, where figures have a sense of stillness and contemplation. Reeve’s work draws on the traditions of magical realism, where we, the viewer, are drawn slowly, gradually into dreamlike scenes. The fabric delicately and majestically floating in the wind provides a sense of movement that contrasts the calmness of her figures. As with Olúlòde's work, a sense of tension is palpable, though her work emits a feeling of longing or nervous desire. It is not until we set eyes upon her work where hands embrace, however soft and fleeting, that we can breathe again.

Throughout ‘Gossamer’ both Olúlòde and Reeve construct worlds where movement guides the viewer. Olúlòde’s figures swim, Reeve’s fabrics float in the wind. Together they explore intimacy from different starting points, but both culminate in a grasping, a holding, a unity, a beauty.

all images © the gallery and the artist(s)