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Silvia Lerin | Flowers | Saturation Point, London, June 2025
Review by James Campion
©Copyright Patrick Morrissey and Clive Hancock All rights reserved.
F-Begonia (2025), Acrylic on canvas and wood, 200 x 200 x 5 cm.
F-White and Yellow Rose (2025), Acrylic on canvas and wood, 151 x 151 x 5 cm.
F-White and Yellow Lily (2025), Acrylic on canvas, 151 x 151.5 x 4.5 cm.
F-Yellow Iris (2025), Acrylic on canvas and wood, 126 x 62.5 x 5 cm.
Silvia Lerin’s latest exhibition at Saturation Point presents a quiet yet potent
meditation on the idea of the English garden – not as a literal site, but as a layered
metaphor. Consisting of four mixed-media works, the show unfolds like a soft-spoken
conversation between painting and sculpture, abstraction and association, above and
below.
Each piece takes the form of a diamond, bisected horizontally into two distinct yet
interrelated halves – with one notable variation. In the work F-Begonia, it is as
though the top triangle of the canvas has been peeled down from the front, hanging
forward like a drooping petal or a soft fold. In the other works, by contrast, the
upper triangle appears to lift upward from the back of the panel, as if unfolding
or blooming. The lower triangle in those pieces is constructed on a conventional
panel support and painted with a dappled texture – a surface treatment that enhances
its visual weight and earth-like density, further contrasting with the smoother,
plainer upper sections. The effect is almost botanical: the canvas seems to grow
from a textured ground, a tactile metaphor for emergence, duality, and transformation.
At first glance, the works may appear purely non-representational. But with the artist’s
framing – the thematic link to an English garden – subtler associations begin to
emerge. The upper folds recall the softness and fragility of flower petals, while
the lower sections speak to root systems, stems, and soil. This visual and material
tension is a recurring device in Lerin’s practice. In earlier work, the artist has
spoken of “a duality present between two volumes and presented textures”, describing
it as “an element which divides or unites, depending on how you want to see it”.
In this series, that tension – or vibration – between unity and separation remains
central to the experience of the work.
Colour is restrained but purposeful. The palette is largely limited to whites, yellows,
and greys, with canvas folds generating shadow and tone through form rather than
pigment. In two of the works, F-White and Yellow Rose, and F-White and Yellow Lily,
faint dustings of yellow pigment appear, suggestive of pollen settling on the surface
– a delicate but evocative detail. These same pieces also feature a thin ridge of
saturated yellow along the horizontal seam, like a flash of concentrated pollen at
the point of tension, drawing the eye and anchoring the form. A third work, F-Yellow
Iris, which is structurally similar, is rendered entirely in yellow – a monochrome
piece that feels more immersive, as if the atmosphere of the garden has thickened
and taken hold. The remaining piece – the structural outlier described earlier –
is devoid of pigment entirely, its surface recalling an aged, primed canvas. This
careful modulation of colour across the series deepens the sense of progression,
from quiet materiality to bloom to full saturation.
The result is a body of work that hovers somewhere between the organic and the architectural,
the sensual and the minimal. Lerin’s garden is not a depiction but a distillation:
a space of tension, energy, and transformation.
All images courtesy of Silvia Lerin