Nick Dawes: Trace Elements @ KORNFELD Galerie Berlin

With Trace Elements, KORNFELD Gallery presents a solo exhibition by London-based artist Nick Dawes (b. 1969, Johannesburg), bringing together new works from his current phase of practice. Curated by Charles Moore, the exhibition is dedicated to a painterly approach that consciously resists the visual acceleration of the present, placing time, materiality, and attention at its core.

Nick Dawes’ works are created by pouring thin layers of paint onto untreated canvas. Transparency, layering, and a visibly inscribed temporal dimension shape the surfaces of the paintings. Color appears not as a decorative element, but as a structuring principle. The painterly process remains openly legible, lending the works a quiet yet intense presence.

Conceptually, Dawes’ work enters into a contemporary dialogue with key positions of postwar abstract painting such as Ed Clark, Mark Rothko, and Sam Gilliam, without citing them directly. His painting carries forward their inquiries into color, space, and materiality with consistency and clarity, asserting the continued relevance of painting as a site of concentrated perception and temporal experience.