Galerie Max Hetzler presents An Orbed Drop of Light, an exhibition of works by Walton Ford. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in the London space.
For the exhibition, Ford presents a selection of paintings and accompanying studies which extend his career-long investigation into the relationship between humans, animals and the natural world. Several works form part of the artist’s new series of cinematic depictions of wolves, which explores the beauty, surrender and love that can be revealed in times of peril. ‘The viewer is unarmed in these watercolours,’ Ford reflects, ‘a witness of sublimity and silence.’ Looming large over the viewer, the wolves are framed by dramatic, expansive skies inspired by the cloud architecture of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s (1696–1770) ceiling frescoes. Ford notes: ‘I wanted to see if I could create the sensation of looking up, past the wolves and into the heavens.’ As is typical of Ford’s oeuvre, many of the paintings incorporate literary allusions to writers and poets.