Daniel Pettitt and Ella Belenky present new and recent paintings in dialogue at Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London, from 29 November to 14 December 2024. The exhibition opens on Thursday 28 November, 6 to 8 pm, curated by Andrew Price.

The title comes from American writer, poet, and art critic Frank O'Hara's piece Radio, and the poem's logic of switching between stations shapes the curatorial premise: each painting a different frequency, inspiration found through impulse rather than system. The pairing highlights a shared commitment to experimentation beyond categorisation, both artists forsaking a signature mode in favour of work that holds tension between revealing and obscuring, communication and illegibility.

Pettitt's contributions develop his ongoing interest in allusive and speculative abstraction. Abstract passages of gestural mark-making, hints at figuration, fragments of found imagery, and textual impositions blend into what he describes as 'provisional fields and partial images'. Elements support one another while threatening to eradicate one another, every gesture met with its counter. Marks pile up atop and alongside, making surfaces into a patchwork of zones, legible as laid out across an expanse, not unlike a map.

Shown together, the paintings produce what the press release calls 'a symphony of vocabularies, techniques, palettes and motifs, more than the ear can hold'.

Image: Installation view, More Than the Ear Can Hold, Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, 2024. © The Artists. Courtesy Unit 1 Gallery Workshop.