Deltas

Encounter is pleased to present James Collins – ‘Deltas’, opening on Thursday 19th March 2026. The exhibition marks Collins' second solo show with the gallery and brings together a body of recent paintings produced between 2024–26.

Deltas form where rivers begin to slow and reshape as they evolve into different bodies of water. Under the right conditions, layers of fertile sediment build up until ground visibly breaks the surface, introducing alternate spaces and routes in these changeable sites. Collins' abstract paintings echo this process — carving foundations and reforming pathways, they deposit a rich array of references as they journey through their painterly landscapes.

Each work is rooted in a syntax of recurring structures, forms particular to Collins. His compositions are constructed, excavated and dispersed repeatedly until an image starts to take shape. Built from latent traces and established over large passages of time, the paintings hold the history of their making in the dense ground from which they emerge. The works operate like a covered archaeological site, but one in which new forms grow over the scars of the land. Accumulated weight, arrangement of space and encrusted surfaces suggest underlying matter. Foundational lines and directional planes are left poised on the edge of tidal movement.

In this body of work Collins investigates the relationship between alchemy and objecthood in painting through his unique manipulation and moulding of surface and edge. Through interplays with oil, oil bar and raw pigment — alongside the use of unconventional tools for mark making — Collins pushes paint into foreign terrains. It becomes an unknowable substance. The paintings appear formed from living matter. Enigmatic deltas, operating within their own logic, both inside and outside of time.

The exhibition runs until 16th May 2026.

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. Upcoming and recent solo and dual exhibitions include; 'Deltas', Encounter, Lisbon (2026), ‘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 recent group exhibitions include ‘Domino’, Encounter (2025), ‘Passages’, Encounter (2024), 'Excavation: Macro to Micro' curated by Deborah Smith, London (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.

Artist Page at Encounter

James Collins 'Deltas'