Life, and especially life as an artist, can feel like you’re walking a tightrope between grim reality and joyful make-believe. To stay motivated, to keep creating, to even get out of bed some days – you have to be a little wilfully delusional. This show is about that necessary, slightly absurd magic trick: keeping hope alive while the world is kind of on-fire.
Dan Withey
From the looming shadows of AI art and shifting cultural tides to the bigger storms of war, climate change, and other seismic forces, the noise of reality is always there. And yet – somehow – Dan Withey finds a way to paint, laugh and imagine better worlds. The work in this exhibition dances between realism and playful invention, holding space for both the darkness and the daydream. There’s even a sprinkling of quantum weirdness, because sometimes that’s the only way he can make sense of things.
The Optimist and the Tricky Magic is a reminder that while the world may not always be kind, there’s a strange stubborn beauty in choosing to keep going.
Please find the catalogue and pricelist here