Berggruen Gallery presents recent paintings and works on paper by American artist Darren Waterston, marking his second solo exhibition with the gallery. Building on his career-long exploration of the pastoral, Waterston's latest body of work explores psychological visions of nature using music as visual inspiration. Drawing from compositions by Benjamin Britten, John Taveler, Philip Glass, and Nico Muhly, the artist investigates the synthesis of time, rhythm, and movement within landscape painting. The exhibition represents a deeper delving into abstraction, featuring floating fields of color that envelop subtle figuration drawn from nature. With particular interest in historical conceptions of the sublime, Waterston examines the tension between beauty and terror, exploring how scale and perspective shape perception. Using traditional preparation methods including rabbit skin glue, genuine gesso, and oil glazing techniques derived from Northern Renaissance painters, Waterston creates works that exist as amalgamations of dreamlike, observed, and historical worlds.
