James Collins

Collins’ works are shaped over extended periods and hold the history of their making in the dense painterly ground from which they emerge. The paintings possess a formal weight and palpable physicality in their encrusted, layered and labored surfaces. The essential viscosity of the compositions Collins renders, reflect a process of slow contemplation in which gradual thoughts are not only formed, but continually malleable and left reverberating on the edge of movement. The works operate like an active archeological site, in which the bones of ideas are perpetually dug out, brought to light, dusted and reburied to be later excavated again. The painted forms feel settled and established through large passages of time. Collins’ paintings expand and contract around a cognitive cartography particular to the artist. Similar to a stream of water impressing itself onto the earth or spreading through an ancient floodplain, the works slowly carve and reshape familiar routes, depositing a rich sediment of references as they journey through their painterly landscapes. The works are rooted in a syntax of recurring signs and symbols often interspersed in hidden pathways throughout their organic compositions. For instance, enduring motifs of the adjacent circle and square recur, sometimes rendered on the verge of lithic sculptural relief and at other moments hazily emerging through a veil of translucent color. Often a series of interwoven forms will catch the light, like the skeletal body of a buried fossil enticing the eye from within the face of a rock.

James Collins (1992) graduated with a BA (Hons) from Wimbledon College of Art, London, in 2015 and Master of Arts (MA) from Royal College of Art, London, in 2017. Recent solo and dual exhibitions include; ‘Ground’, Workplace, London (2024), ‘James Collins – New Paintings’, Encounter, Lisbon (2023), ‘Occultation’ CAR Gallery, Bologne (2021), ‘14’ PM/AM, London (2021), ‘Penumbra’ Claas Reiss, London (2021). Selected upcoming and recent group exhibitions include ‘Domino’, Encounter (2025), ‘Passages’, Encounter (2024), ‘Once, Then, Gone’ New Child Gallery, Belgium (2023), ‘The Reason For Painting’ Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, United Kingdom (2023), ‘Here and Long Ago’ Gerhard Hofland, Amsterdam (2023), ‘Alte Freunde, neue Freunde’ Claas Reiss, London (2021) ‘Hideaway’ Monti8, Latina (Italy), ‘Abstract with Figure’ at James Fuentes, New York (2020), ‘Lost & Found’ at Rod Barton in London (2017), ‘Duo’ at Galleri Jacob Bjørn in Aarhus, Denmark (2018) Collins was included in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2015 and the John Moore Painting Prize in 2016. Collins work included in the Simmons and Simmons Collection and can be found in important private collections in UK, Europe, America, Canada and New Zealand.

Diogo Pimentão

Diogo Pimentão (Lisbon, 1973) lives and works in London. He studied art at Ar.Co., Lisbon; the Sculpture Seminar, Gotland, and the Centro Internacional de Escultura Pêro Pinheiro in Portugal. The practice of drawing, especially using graphite, is the central axis of his work. He conceives it as a form of contact between a material and a support through a repetitive gesture, sometimes blind or procedural, but he also frequently employs cement, often in tension with paper. His research combines randomness with a rigorous technique, through traces and marks, lines, or strokes. The sheet can be folded, raised in space, or placed on the floor.

Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include; ‘Leaping Towards’ Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2025, upcoming), ‘Proportions of Silence’, Encounter, Lisbon (2024), ‘Extended Touch’ Praz Delavallade, Paris (2023), ‘To Be Completed/ Por Completar’, Casa da Cerca Art Centre, Almada (2022), ‘Transitions Linéaire’, Drawing House, Paris (2022), ‘Drawing Backwards’, FRAC Rouen Normadie (2020), ‘Loud Whisper’, Rocio Santa Cruz, Barcelona (2019), ‘Drawing Body’, Cristina Guerra, Lisbon (2019), ‘Drawn Towards’, Kentler International Drawing Space, New York (2019), ‘Insignificantes’, Museu Nacional Grão Vasco, Viseu (2016), Disequilibrium Displacement, IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015). ‘Residual’, Museu de Arte Contemporânea - Colecção António Cachola, Elvas (2015). Recent institutional group exhibitions include; ‘O lado mais visível das imagens’, Centro de Arte Contemporânea de Coimbra, Portugal (2024), ‘... of that which is (un)object II’, Fundação Leal Rios, Lisbon (2024), ‘Descuradas’, Colecção Norlinda e José Lima, São João da Madeira (2023), Collection Frédéric De Goldschmidt, Cloud Seven, Brussels (2021), Drawing Positions, CAB Fundación Caja De Burgos, Burgos (2020), ‘Constellations: a choreography of minimal gestures’, Museum Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2019), ‘MMIPO’, Museu da Misericórdia, Porto (2018), ‘Intersticial II - Diálogos no Espaço entre Acontecimentos’, Portuguese Art at Norlinda and José Lima Collection, São João da Madeira (2018), ‘Spatial Flux’ Joann Gonzalez Hickey Collection, Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, Colorado (2018), ‘(pre)Textos’, Foundation Otazu, Navarra (2018), ‘Resonance’, New Acquisitions, Frac Normandie Rouen, Rouen (2018), ‘Private Choices’, Centrale For Contemporary Art, Bruxelles (2017), ‘New Additions’ Kentler International Drawing Space, New York (2017), ‘Quote/ Unquote, Entre Apropriação e Diálogo’, (Collection Foundation EDP), MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon (2017), ‘CAAA’, for the triennial of Architecture, Guimarães (2016), ‘New Acquisitions’, Serralves Foundation, Porto (2016), ‘Outiller le dessin’, Centre d’art La Panacée, Montpellier (2016), ’Papier XL’, Centre Georges Pompidou, Galerie d’art Graphique, Paris (2016), ‘Summer Guests’, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2016), ‘Abaixo as Fronteiras’, ‘MACE Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas’, Colecção António Cachola, Elvas (2016), ‘Abaixo as Fronteiras’, MUDE Museu de Design e de Moda, Colecção Francisco Capelo, Lisboa (2016).

Diogo Pimentão’s works can be found in important public and private collections worldwide including: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, FR; Serralves Foundation, Porto, PT; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, PT; MONA, Museum of Old and New Art, AU; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, FR; Pomeranz Collection, Vienna, AU; European Central Bank, Berlin, DE; Collection Lambert, Avignon, FR; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, IT; Thalie Foundation, Brussels, BE; Carmona e Costa Foundation, Lisbon, PT; Portugal Telecom Foundation, Lisbon, PT; Joann Gonzalez Hickey Collection, New York, US; Fonds National d’At Contemporain, Paris, FR; PLMJ Foundation, Lisbon, PT; Kablanc Otazu Foundation, Pamplona, ES; EDP Foundation, Lisbon, PT; Museum of Contemporary Art - António Cachola Collection, Elvas, PT; Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins, Lisbon, PT; FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, FR; Leal Rios Foundation, Lisbon Portugal PT; Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, AU; FRAC Normandie, Rouen, FR.

Art Düsseldorf: James Collins, Diogo Pimentão | Stand D13