Edel Assanti, London | June 5 – August 14, 2026
Edel Assanti announced Dale Lewis’s return to London with these words: “The artist’s fourth exhibition with the gallery and his first solo show in London in five years.” After a five-year hiatus, this statement sounds dry and neutral. But when you look at the paintings, you understand just how much has been packed into those five years.
Lewis is a well-known voice for his large-scale figurative paintings—intertwining class reality, East London, and daily life with the compositional frameworks of the Old Masters. But this time is different. The exhibition press release states it clearly: the works are crafted not with “sardonic wit” and dark humor, but with an intimate simplicity. His previous works used to present us with a caricature; these paintings speak of themselves.
The subject matter: his late grandfather, family friends, the father of a former lover, Lewis himself. Each portrait is a gesture that brings the private into existence within the public sphere. And out of those gestures emerges a familiar Britain: frantic rage, weariness, despondency. But this time, it is a Britain viewed from the inside.
The standout work is Horizon (2025). Lewis says the following about this painting:
“It can also be read as an abstract landscape or a horizon line—individuals or groups, the dead or the living, as organic matter we are all part of that line.”
In other words, this is not a catalogue of portraits, but a collective mourning. A sifting of a nation, of everyday people, of invisible lives.
Illusions are lost. And sometimes, within that loss, the real thing finally becomes visible.
Exhibition Details:
- Artist: Dale Lewis
- Exhibition Title: Lost Illusions
- Venue: Edel Assanti, London
- Dates: June 5 – August 14, 2026
- Admission: Open to the public
