NAPLES.- Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples is presenting Push Me, Pull You, an exhibition curated by Jenni Lomax.
“Featuring works by nine artists from past and present generations, Push Me, Pull You arrives out of a conversation held in 2018 with the artist Amy Sillman. The note ‘pushing to the edge, pulling back from the brink’ arose from a discussion about painting in general, and the artist Prunella Clough in particular. What connects the artists in this exhibition is the sense that they think and – to quote Clough – ‘fight’ with their materials. By taking things emotionally and physically to an edge, before bringing them back into view, each artist allows shape, imagery and atmosphere to emerge. They therefore build a conversation that goes back-and-forth between the materiality of the process and something drawn from the back of the mind or caught out of the corner of the eye.
Each artist plots the surface of the picture plane in an almost topographical way. They layer motifs, signifiers, textures and lines in a manner that contests normal expectations of scale and challenge the conventional play of figure and ground. Time also plays a part in that it collapses and stretches through such distinctive means of making, and personal archived observations and memory of place are conflated.
While these artists take pleasure in pushing the possibilities of paint, their works are not lacking in structure or criteria. By cleverly avoiding being either abstract or figurative, they become neither and both by negotiating a territory that denies and deflects obvious categorisation.
Small ‘asides’ and quiet coincidences form connections between the artists and the works brought together for this exhibition in Naples. A link can also be made with the city’s art of the past; evidence of artists savouring the push and pull of painting can be found in the space between and around the principal subjects of paintings from previous times. It is in this liminal gap that the movement of paint conjures a flicker of light on the curve of a cooking pot, for instance, a glimpse of a child playing in the shadows of a table, a memory of a landscape seen over a shoulder or the outlined shape and gritty textures of pavement edge felt underfoot.” – Jenni Lomax, 2025
Artists in the exhibition include: Hurvin Anderson (b. 1965, Birmingham, England), Prunella Clough (b. 1919, London, England, d. 1999, London, England), René Daniëls (b. 1950, Eindhoven, Netherlands), Matthew Krishanu (b. 1980, Bradford, England), Bice Lazzari (b. 1900, Venice, Italy, d. 1981, Rome, Italy) Francis Offman (b. 1987, Butare, Rwanda), Pinot Gallizio (b. 1902, Alba, Italy, d. 1964, Alba, Italy), Amy Sillman (b. 1955, Detroit MI) and Caragh Thuring (b. 1972, Brussels, Belgium).
Jenni Lomax is an independent curator and writer based in London. She is Director Emeritus of Camden Art Centre, London where, as director from 1990 to 2017, she established an influential and forward-thinking programme of international exhibitions and artist-residencies that placed artists and education at the core of the institution. She continues to work in an advisory capacity and as a trustee with many arts organisations, including Henry Moore Foundation, Tate Liverpool, Raven Row, and Freelands Foundation. Lomax is currently working on a number of curatorial and publishing projects with London-based institutions. This is her third project in collaboration with Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples. In 2020 she worked with Alexandre da Cunha on his exhibition, Arena, and realised A Matter of Life and Death, a group exhibition of works in clay in 2022.
