VENICE.- The Belt of Venus brings together six new, monumental paintings by Daniel Crews-Chubb. The exhibition takes its title from the atmospheric phenomenon visible shortly before sunrise or after sunset, an ethereal pinkish band that separates the earth’s dark shadow from the brightening sky. This distinct afterglow serves as the direct inspiration for the artist’s colour palette. It permeates the exhibition, radiating within the gallery space and uniting the works through hues that feel simultaneously celestial and heavily grounded in the flesh. Within this atmospheric glow, Daniel extends his career-long interrogation of the human form into increasingly abstract territory, deliberately testing the limits of our perception.

At the core of these new works is an active exploration of pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon where the human brain instinctively imposes a recognisable image upon abstract or chaotic shapes. Because we are inherently social creatures, we are hardwired to look for the figure, constantly seeking out faces and limbs to make sense of the visual information in front of us. Daniel walks a precarious, brilliant tightrope between abstraction and figuration here. He plays with the absolute minimum visual data required for a viewer to construct a body in their mind. The paintings themselves are imposing in scale, demanding a physical engagement from the audience, yet the forms held within them refuse to be entirely pinned down or easily consumed.

The figures populate these large-scale canvases in structural ways that remain consistent with the artist’s broader practice. They appear either as single figures, belonging to his ongoing immortal series, or clustered together in dense groupings that he describes as emerging ‘out of chaos’. Across both formats, a distinct mythological lineage anchors the imagery. Daniel frequently references deities and the fragmented, dismembered bodies of classical Roman statuary. These fractured forms act as a memento mori, serving as a visual reminder of our own physical vulnerabilities and the inevitability of decay. The exhibition’s title also carries a direct dual meaning, invoking the Roman goddess Venus to firmly centre the projection of divine female strength and power.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Daniel’s work is its complex relationship with art history. The paintings feel deeply familiar, rooted in a tradition that viewers will intuitively recognise, yet they remain entirely fresh, timeless, and surprising. He readily looks to expressive painters like

Willem de Kooning and Cecily Brown for inspiration, but he also engages structurally with Cubism. He specifically cites Georges Braque Girl with a Mandolin as a compositional touchstone for this new series. However, his intention is never to replicate a purely Cubist aesthetic, as his own painterly language is vastly more visceral and textured. Instead, he borrows the underlying mechanic of showing a figure as if it is rotating on the canvas, capturing the illusion of movement and allowing the subject to be viewed from multiple directions at once. He also adopts the focal techniques found in such historical works, frequently rendering the face as the most detailed element of the painting. This clarity actively draws the viewer in, anchoring the gaze just before the surrounding anatomy dissolves into energetic, abstract marks.

This rich dialogue with the past extends directly into the poses of his subjects. Daniel looks to painted figures and classical sculptures, embedding the familiar, sweeping postures of Michelangelo’s David or the Three Graces within the raw texture of his canvases. As the artist himself describes it, he enjoys “riffing off” these iconic moments, playing against the foundations of art history. It is exactly this approach that adds a comforting layer of recognition to the viewing experience.

Yet, crucially, he is consciously disrupting traditional art historical gazes. Throughout centuries of painting, the female form has often been rendered passive, offered up for the consumption of the artist and the audience. Daniel rejects this dynamic entirely. He ensures his figures maintain complete agency and are unapologetically dominant within their space rather than being exploited by the eye of the beholder. By granting his subjects this undeniable power, cultivated through a deliberate air of mystery and abstraction, he ensures their narratives are never neatly spelled out or laid bare. They demand to be looked at on their own terms, existing powerfully in the space between the paint and the viewer’s own mind.

Gemma Rolls-Bentley