Simon Preston Gallery is thrilled to present, Like Pineapples In A Greenhouse, the second solo exhibition of British painter Nick Goss at the gallery. The exhibition will comprise of seven recent large-scale paintings, together with a group of smaller watercolors on paper.

As in his previous canvases principally depicting interior spaces that the artist typically inhabits, a large triptych in this exhibition, titled Dress Parade, attempts to evoke a traditional studio space with familiar paint spattered floorboards, buckets of brushes and throwaway chairs. In painting this scene, Goss reflects that he: “accidentally revealed previous images that had lain dormant underneath the layers of paint - imbedded in the linen. These costumed carnivalesque figures that emerged felt like they had been constructed in the studio of an unknown artist, waiting to be unearthed, at a later date."

Although working from extensive preparatory works on paper and carefully constructed balsa-wood models, Goss is not concerned with depicting any type of certainty, each scene is situated in a space between what is actually there in front of him and what is remembered. He describes a moth eaten cactus perched in the reception of a rehearsal space in London that had palpably transported him back to Leon Trotsky’s house in Mexico City, which he had visited years previously. “It was an exotic, hot place full of patterned tablecloths, painted cupboards, palms and cactuses - with an overriding sense of melancholy permeating the domestic scene. The contrast couldn’t have been more profound compared to the ashen interior of the rehearsal room, but for that short space in time I was located in both places. When I came to paint that same cactus in Hot House Plants, I wanted to capture this sense of displacement.”

The new works, painted on linen or hessian backed on sailcloth, have a rougher hew and appear more deliberate. Figures are captured performing or preparing to go on stage, but there remains a concerted effort towards an incompleteness and an absence of any resolution - only to be belied by a grid of watercolors depicting the careful and endless rehearsals of each composition.

Nick Goss was born in 1981 in Bristol, England and currently lives and works in London. Goss studied at the Slade, University College, London and completed his MFA at the Royal Academy Schools, London, 2009. Previous solo exhibitions include Tin Drum, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, 2012, Herz Man Sky, Simon Preston Gallery, New York, 2011 and Veverka, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, 2010. Other recent presentations include Strata, Summlung Lenikus, Vienna, 2012, Never Ever Ever Land, Anna Kustera, New York, 2012, Gifted, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, 2011, Newspeak: British Art Now at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2010 and Saatchi New Sensations in October 2009.

All images courtesy the artist & Simon Preston, New York.