BERLIN.- KÖNIG GALERIE present This Time Tomorrow by Australian-born, France-based artist Jordy Kerwick in the Vault of St. Agnes.
Taking its title from The Kinks' 1970 song, the exhibition begins with a question: "This time tomorrow, where will we be?" The refrain captures a feeling of uncertainty about a future that seems near at hand yet remains indistinct. Across a group of recent oil and acrylic paintings, Kerwick turns the day-to-day into a site of meditation, where familiar motifs and fleeting impressions are transformed into vivid fables of the future.
These works begin with small details: vivid greens, floral bursts of magenta, vermilion, and mauve, the presence of water, and the passing impressions of lived surroundings. In Kerwick's paintings, such familiar elements do not remain fixed. They accumulate, shift, and recombine, unfolding into tableaux where the everyday opens onto the mythical and the imagined.
Animals, plants, masks, and hybrid figures recur throughout the exhibition, moving between domestic scene, dream image, and allegory. Rendered in saturated color and animated by stripes, dots, waves, and repeated marks, the paintings hover between observation and invention. In Kerwick's hands, the ordinary is not left behind, but recast: the everyday becomes theatrical, unsettled, and strangely prophetic.
This Time Tomorrow, the future is neither distant nor defined. It appears instead as something sensed from within the present, through fleeting encounters, recurring motifs, and sustained attention to the day-to-day. Kerwick's paintings begin in ordinary life, then carry it outward into meditation and myth.
Jordy Kerwick (b. 1982, Melbourne, Australia) is a self-taught artist who began his painting journey in 2016. Kerwick’s works teem with an eclectic menagerie of domestic objects, mythical creatures, and wild animals, all conjuring a fantastical folklore rooted in the artist’s boundless creativity. These playful yet enigmatic figures animate his canvases, fusing contemporary narratives with ancient fables. Employing a mix of materials, from oil and acrylic paint to spray paint, oil stick, and collage, Kerwick embraces an intuitive process that thrives on spontaneity and the serendipity of imperfection. His works are steeped in art historical references, intertwining motifs from ancient iconography with the vivid, high-energy aesthetics of pop culture. Egyptian symbols intermingle with the dramatic hues and bold outlines reminiscent of comic book heroes and villains. His approach reflects the influence of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Hard-edge painting, drawing inspiration from luminaries such as Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Agnes Martin, and Henri Matisse.
In just a few short years, Kerwick has garnered international acclaim for his audacious, unfiltered approach to color, texture, and pattern, creating striking, expressionistic compositions that are as visceral as they are imaginative. Recent solo exhibitions include presentations at Allouche Benias Gallery, Athens, Greece (2021); Galerie Julie Cadet, Paris, France (2021); Union Gallery, London, England (2021); Pt. 2 Gallery, Oakland, California (2021, 2019); Piermarq*, Sydney, Australia (2020, 2018); Anna Zorina Gallery, New York, USA (2019); a dual exhibition at Masahiro Maki Gallery in Tokyo, Japan and Paris, France (2019); TW Fine Art, Brisbane, Australia (2019); and Delphian Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2018).
