It is with great pleasure that The Commercial presents a solo exhibition by Mitch Cairns for Sydney Contemporary 2024, 05.09.24 — 08.09.24. We are located in Booth H02.

Mitch Cairns’ figurative painting practice balances a brilliance of improvised pictorial concepts with an unparalleled ability in his oil paint medium, a surprising pairing of wit and discipline. Cairns’ subject matter comes from fragments of the artist’s day both inside and outside the studio, a poetics of domestic/familial life where love, routine, self-reflection, eroticism, melancholy, anxiety provide ample image-ideas. These pictures arrive with clarity like the snapping of fingers that signals an idea:  * something happened *  His paintings are often a detail of a thing or an event given context within flourishes of glazed paint and architectural delineations. On top of his foundation of the everyday, Cairns builds homages to artist and literary heroes, those who can also dance with image, paint or words.