Artist: Tim Kent

JD Malat Gallery Dubai presents Horsepower, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Tim Kent. In this new body of work, Kent examines the historical and cultural significance of the horse – a universal symbol of power that has shaped art, society, and human innovation for millennia.

From early cave paintings to the grand civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Rome, horses have been central to agriculture, commerce, and warfare. They reappear throughout art history – from Leonardo da Vinci and George Stubbs to Edgar Degas and Rosa Bonheur – embodying physical power and symbolic role. This relationship continues into the modern age: the term ‘horsepower,’ coined by engineer James Watt, forever links the strength of horses to mechanical progress.

“The title Horsepower playfully addresses the historical use of the horse in art and literature while also nodding to how we gauge the value of work,” Kent explains. “From cave wall to the modern engine, the horse has remained a constant measure of power and imagination.”

Working across large-scale painted interiors, landscapes, and invented worlds, Kent transforms historical reference into contemporary compositions that hover between reality and imagination. His works merge Renaissance perspective with modern imagery, uniting architectural precision with expressive abstraction.

In Titan (2025), a vast interior inspired by Wentworth Woodhouse in England becomes a metaphor for legacy. Once the site of George Stubbs’s equine studies, the now empty mansion transforms into a stage where past and present intersect. Kent’s figures appear to step out of an unseen painting and into the viewer’s space, blurring foreground and background, memory and invention.

In 300 HP (2025), Kent juxtaposes a pastoral detail drawn from Claude Lorrain’s baroque landscape with a wrecked Ferrari 250 GTO, photographed by Douglas Nye. Creating a collision between classical beauty and industrial ambition.

Pegasus (2025) revisits myth through technology. The work’s mysterious rider, their cloak caught in the wind to form a winged silhouette, sits before an architectural structure generated and derived from studies of Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. Once a symbol of progress and later postwar control, the airfield becomes an emblem of human aspiration and its contradictions.

Together, works such as Titan, 300 HP, Pegasus, Trojan and others trace a continuum of human ambition – from the classical to the industrial, the mythological to the mechanical. Several of these titles, also names of rocket systems used in space exploration and warfare, point to a duality that defines Kent’s vision: horsepower as a measure of physical, technological, and political power. The exhibition continues his investigation into systems of value and transformation, creating spaces where past and present converge, and inviting viewers to reflect on how symbols evolve – from horse to engine to rocket – yet continue to shape our collective imagination.

“Ultimately, my hope is that viewers connect with the theme,” says Kent, “and that the work is seen not as serious but as a curious place to begin a conversation – a playful reflection on history in art and the ways we measure progress.”

Jean-David Malat, Founder of JD Malat Gallery, adds: “Tim Kent’s practice bridges centuries of artistic inquiry. In Horsepower, he re-examines one of art’s oldest subjects – the horse – as a lens through which to view progress, ambition, and the human condition. The exhibition resonates strongly in the Middle East, where the horse remains a timeless emblem of beauty, endurance, and cultural pride. Kent’s ability to weave that spirit into a contemporary dialogue makes this body of work particularly meaningful to present in Dubai.”

Tim Kent (b. 1975, Canada/USA) is a Canadian-American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work explores power structures within art and history, global infrastructures, and social relations. Combining architectural perspective, landscape, and abstraction, Kent creates ethereal compositions that transform historical motifs into psychologically charged spaces.