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Opening in January 2026
Cliff Warner: States of Being
States of Being presents the first U.S. exhibition of British artist Cliff Warner (b. 1961, England), whose paintings move deliberately between figuration and abstraction to explore the emotional and psychological conditions of human life. The exhibition brings together a recent body of work that reflects Warner’s sustained inquiry into presence, solitude, and the subtle dynamics that shape interior experience.
At its core, States of Being is concerned with how feeling takes form. Warner’s figures appear, recede, and sometimes fragment across layered surfaces, held in moments that feel provisional rather than resolved. These are not narrative scenes in any conventional sense. Instead, they function as quiet propositions—images that register states such as reflection, tension, closeness, and withdrawal without naming them directly. The paintings resist clarity in favor of atmosphere, allowing ambiguity to remain active.
Layering is central to this effect. Acrylics, oils, pastels, inks, and spray paint accumulate and interrupt one another, creating surfaces that feel worked, revised, and deliberately held open. Portions of the image are obscured or partially erased, suggesting memory, hesitation, or the limits of perception itself. What remains visible carries weight precisely because it has emerged through concealment. The viewer is invited to slow down, to attend to what is present and what is withheld, and to recognize the emotional charge of that tension.
Installed together, the works establish a shared psychological space rather than a linear progression. Figures appear alone or in quiet relation to one another, suspended in muted environments that offer no clear setting or resolution. This refusal of certainty is intentional. States of Being asks viewers to inhabit the paintings rather than interpret them, allowing their own states of attention and feeling to become part of the encounter.
Guests and prospective clients are invited to visit the virtual exhibition to view works, make inquiries, and download the exhibition brochure.
About the Artist
Cliff Warner was born in England in 1961 and studied Fine Art at Liverpool Polytechnic, where he developed a strong foundation in painting and figurative drawing. Over several decades, his practice has remained committed to the human figure while gradually loosening its boundaries, allowing abstraction to enter not as departure but as extension.
Warner’s paintings are guided by intuition, revision, and restraint. He does not begin with a fixed image in mind. Instead, forms emerge through process, shaped by repeated engagement with the surface. Marks are added, softened, disrupted, or buried. The figure is never simply depicted; it is arrived at. This approach gives the work its distinctive psychological depth. Figures exist in relation—to one another, to the space they occupy, and to the viewer—held within a larger emotional field rather than presented as isolated subjects.
For Warner, painting is a way of thinking through feeling rather than illustrating it. The work does not offer conclusions. It offers conditions.