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London and Milan based gallery Robilant+Voena once again champion Canadian artist Stephen Appleby-Barr with Mesocosmos, a new exhibition of Appleby-Barr's surreal and "beguiling" paintings.
📍 Robilant + Voena, London
WORDS SOPHIE GOODWIN | HAPPENINGS | 27 MAY 2025
‘I think I might be obsessed with shadows’, says Canadian artist Stephen Appleby-Barr. His beguiling and technical compositions have proved a huge hit for Robilant+Voena, widely recognised as leading international art dealers in Old Master paintings and 20th century Italian art. This is the fourth solo exhibition collaborating with the winning pair, Edmondo di Robilant and Marco Voena, and was two years in the making, opening last Thursday at the gallery’s London space on Dover Street. Previous presentations with the artist took place again in the gallery in London, and then Paris and Milan.
To step into Appleby-Barr’s Mesocosmos is to sit on the threshold between reality and the world of make believe. Each painting seemingly represents purgatory: guarded by Appleby-Barr. He is a modern myth maker, expertly juxtaposing good with evil, and understanding the delicate balance between the two states. He tells stories which are a manifestation of his own sense of inner turmoil: a child sings a haunting tune; flowers explode atop a spectral tower; a senator declaims to an unseen audience.
To Appleby-Barr, "figures that move throughout my work are actors on the stage of my imagination. They are there to help me process the world. I’m easily overwhelmed and I need these characters to play, fight, love and carry on in order to come to terms with everything I’m encountering." The works are left intriguingly and tantalisingly vague – an intentional ploy allowing his viewers to tread their own narrative path.
While highly contemporary, there are certainly nods to the Old Masters. Flower Tower and Two Figures are reminiscent of a Dutch still life. The grandeur and chiaroscuro of each head study is almost an ode to Baroque figure paintings, and "a hint of the Caravaggesque in the way the artist toys with the light" for Voena.
The reduction of color and push towards an atonal grisaille was an important step for the artist, in comparison to his recent exhibition at The Grinnell College Museum of Art (curated by Daniel Strong), which was populated with highly colorful figures.
Appleby-Barr creates intricate sketches of his imagined figures at play, before realising these in sculptural and architectural forms, and finally, in paint. It is this very process that attracted the gallerists to the artist - "that level of complexity and worldbuilding in his practice, the depth – there’s a real metaphysical part to his flower paintings".
The artist speaks highly of his co-conspirators too: "what’s so wonderful... is that they are so ready for the level of classical considerations I bring into my work. We are both looking at the same kind of work and considering it deeply."
Mesocosmos is on view at Robilant+Voena until 4 July.
38 Dover Street, London, W1S 4NL
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