In “Songbirds and Willows“, Darren Almond – British artist, born in 1971 – invites into a profound reflection on time, memory and nature, constructing a journey that challenges the Western notion of linear progression in favor of a more fluid and cyclical understanding of existence. Hosted at Galleria Alfonso Artiaco, the exhibition becomes an exercise in listening and observation, calling us to tune into the subtle frequencies of the natural world and grasp the hidden rhythms of things.
Darren Almond, “The Eucharist”, 2024, dye transfer and acrylic on canvas, diptych, 142,4 x 201 x 4,5 cm (each), 2025, ph. Grafiluce, courtesy of the artist and Alfonso Artiaco
Almond’s practice has long revolved around the concept of time – its lapses, its layers – and here, that interest unfolds through images suspended between presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. The works on display establish an intimate dialogue between memory and matter, transcending the objective to probe how time crystallizes in places and objects. The “Songbirds” emerge from a poetic yet powerful gesture. During visits to Lucian Freud’s London studio, Almond encountered paint-stained rags – the humble remnants of the legendary painter’s process. Transformed into monumental canvases, these forgotten scraps become vast landscapes of color and texture, oscillating between abstraction and figuration. The layers of paint, built up over the surfaces, seem to pulsate with an energy that extends beyond the materials themselves, as if the rags had absorbed not only Freud’s pigments but also the studio’s atmosphere, its labor, its history. Almond refers to these works as “Songbirds” because of the color palette – earthy tones punctuated by sudden bursts of vivid color – echoing the plumage of British songbirds, fragile creatures tied to seasonal cycles, much like memory itself: fleeting, delicate, but resonant.
Darren Almond, “Songbirds and Willows”, installation view (“Songbirds”), ph. Grafiluce, courtesy of the artist and Alfonso Artiaco
The “Willow Works” series continue this meditation on cyclical time through the symbolic figure of the weeping willow – a tree that, for Almond, becomes an emblem of flow, passage and renewal. Each canvas features suspended willow branches rendered in fluid layers of pigment, their delicate forms floating in watery fields of color. Hidden within the compositions, the zero symbol emerges – a conceptual anchor representing infinity, continuity, and interconnection. The seasons materialize in the liquid pigments that layer on the canvas, evoking the passage of time not as a straight line but as a circle in perpetual motion. The zero becomes a focal point, marking the threshold where existence meets non-existence, underscoring Almond’s enduring fascination with the philosophical tensions between being and nothingness.
Darren Almond, “Songbirds and Willows”, installation view (“Willow Work”), ph. Grafiluce, courtesy of the artist and Alfonso Artiaco
In the final room of the “Willow Works”, Almond introduces the element of light through the application of precious metals – gold, copper and palladium – onto the canvas. These reflective materials activate the surface, transforming the paintings into dynamic environments that shift with the changing light. The metallic leaf captures and reflects the surroundings, evoking sunlight or moonlight dancing on water, while the seasonal transitions depicted – willow branches blooming in spring or bare in winter – anchor the work within nature’s cyclical flow. The reference to Japanese byōbu folding screens is not merely aesthetic. Almond adopts this traditional form to explore the passage of time across surfaces, using the screens as conceptual frameworks through which light, nature and time intermingle. This dual tension between cycles and transience finds further depth in “RAGS”, Almond’s parallel project at Cappella Sansevero in Naples. Presented in this sacred, historically layered space, the same paint-stained rags from Freud’s studio take on new significance, caught between the sacred and the mundane, between decay and preservation, echoing the show’s central themes of time, memory, and transformation.
Darren Almond, “Songbirds and Willows”, 2025, installation view (“Gold Willows”), Alfonso Artiaco, Napoli, ph. Grafiluce, courtesy of the artist and Alfonso Artiaco
With “Songbirds and Willows“, Darren Almond doesn’t just offer an exhibition – he creates an experience. The works demand a slow gaze, a contemplative rhythm, asking viewers to step out of the linear rush of modern life and enter into a different temporality – that of nature, memory and materiality. It is in this suspended space, between the flutter of a bird’s wing and the slow growth of a willow branch, that Almond captures the essence of a time that slips through our fingers yet continues to dwell within it.
Info:
Darren Almond. Songbirds and Willows
22/01 – 08/03 2025
Alfonso Artiaco
Piazzetta Nilo 7, Napoli
https://www.alfonsoartiaco.com/en
Art Curator and Art Advisor, graduated in Visual Arts and Cultural Mediation, with Master in Curatorial Practices, born in 1995, lives in Naples. He collaborates with Galleries and Independent Spaces, his research is mainly focused on Emerging Painting, with a careful and inclined gaze also on other forms of aesthetic language.
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