Simon Preston Gallery is thrilled to present the third solo exhibition of British painter Nick Goss, titled Bluing, at the gallery. The exhibition opens on Friday 8 January and will run until Sunday 21 February, 2016.

The exhibition furthers the artist’s exploration of both transient and contemplative places, where ideas are allowed to gestate. Previous works have traversed the inhabited spaces of performance and rehearsal venues, and in this instance, a family run launderette in West London. The launderette perfectly embodies a place of cultural mixing, public function and personal intimacy. The humid aroma of detergent, unkempt horticulture and kitsch decoration appear as exotic signifiers of cultural heritage and migration.

The title Bluing takes its name from a commonly used laundering technique. A chemical process that distorts the way we see, tricking the viewer into seeing something brighter than the reality. The color blue maintains historical associations in both art and music, often being deployed to induce or reflect a certain melancholic state. Goss incorporates a diverse set of techniques that, in turn, expose the location’s layered psychological qualities. Experimenting with salt and fabric dye, soaking the raw linen and allowing them to react with each other, enables process to dictate the space within the paintings. The salt and dyes express ideas of entropy and fading memory - of a bluing, waterlogged world. The technique of staining linen, together with stenciling and screenprinting, is contrasted with tighter more brittle drawing and mark making.

Nick Goss. Obliquely distorted and incomplete compositions evoke a fragmented impression of the eclectic interior.

Nick Goss was born in 1981 in Bristol, England and currently lives and works in London. The artist studied at the Slade, University College, London and completed his MFA at the Royal Academy Schools, London in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include; Green Lanes, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, 2015; Like Pineapples in a Green House, Simon Preston Gallery, New York, 2013. Selected group exhibitions; Tan Lines, The Drawing Room, London, 2014; Beyond The Process, Sammlung Lenikus, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria, 2014; Beastly Hall, Hall Place and Gardens, Kent, 2013; Never Ever Ever Land, Anna Kustera, New York, 2012; Newspeak: British Art Now, the Saatchi Gallery, London, 2010.