David Kim Whittaker The Fear and the Stable

Opera Gallery is delighted to present 'The Fear and the Stable' by David Kim Whittaker in what will be his first exhibition in New York City. One of the most enthralling and intriguing artists of this generation, Whittaker intuitively perpetuates and reshapes the tradition established by British Romantics including Francis Bacon, Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland. 'The Fear and the Stable' includes a new body work made specifically for this exhibition.

The complex works juggle duel states of inner and outer calm and conflict, offering us a glimpse of strength and fragility, peace and discord, the conscious and subconscious, the masculine and the feminine through areas both delicate and intricate, alongside the more physical and often brutal gestural passages of paint. These ubiquitous states of conflict are arguably reinforced by Whittaker’s gender dysphoria and the personal struggle with a condition that they have learned to live with through their endeavour of expressing something bigger than oneself through painting.

The result is a universal human portrait of the 21st century, emphasizing the split utopian and dystopian nature of the times that we live in.