Iain Andrews
Whispers from the Red Room
Curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi
Galleria Gaburro
Press Preview
25 February 2026 – 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM, in the presence of the artist
Galleria Gaburro presents the first solo exhibition in Italy by Iain Andrews (Birmingham, UK, 1974), featuring more than thirty never seen before paintings created over the last two years specifically for this occasion. The exhibition will be held at the gallery’s Milan venue and will remain open with free admission from 26 February to 30 May 2026.
A leading figure in contemporary British painting who emerged on the international art scene during the 2010s, Andrews explores the boundaries between good and evil, reality and imagination, and the capacity of art to transform pain into beauty and redemption.
Andrews’ painting originates from direct engagement with human fragility and suffering. As an art therapist, he works with children who have experienced abuse and who engage in self-harming behaviours, transforming their stories of trauma into images that speak of pain, loss, and resilience. This work with some of society’s most vulnerable individuals is deeply reflected in his own artistic research, lending it both tangible physicality and exceptional emotional depth.
His paintings become spaces of expression and liberation, where the violence of the real world is reinterpreted and transfigured through paint, offering viewers the opportunity to confront both darkness and hope in a meditative and sensory way.
Within the complex pictorial palimpsests of the British artist, evil is never heroic or seductive: it is a void, a corruption of goodness. Andrews takes pre-existing images—from art history or everyday life—and transforms them, granting them new life, energy, and meaning. Rather than corrupting the original image, the artist breathes new life into it, creating a vital force that tells stories of loss, suffering, and redemption.
This approach mirrors his daily work as an art therapist, where trauma is not concealed but translated into an experience of care and healing.
“As an art therapist, I have long explored the darkest parts of many children’s unconscious minds: despair, self-harm, hatred of their own bodies, humiliated anger, and depression are recurring themes, and they inevitably influence my paintings. Many of the fairy tales that interest me and provide a framework for my work address equally dark and terrible themes—for example, Hansel and Gretel. I often find myself torn between the need to remain faithful to these subjects and the desire to shape works that possess a certain beauty for me. Hence the use of an apparently ‘pretty’ surface, similar to Disney’s adaptation of a fairy tale rooted in darkness, which I embrace as part of the tension generated by the painting.”
— Iain Andrews
Alongside Chaïm Soutine, artists such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard, François Boucher, and Antoine Watteau have played an important role in Andrews’ artistic formation.
His attraction to a Rococo-inspired visual language and atmosphere developed partly through watching animated films with his daughters, particularly Sleeping Beauty, which draws extensively on the aesthetics of eighteenth-century French art.
An apparent beauty emerges in his work: an idyllic, floral, and tender surface that nevertheless conceals an ambiguous and forbidden undercurrent, echoing the painful experiences of the young patients the British artist encounters in therapy. Fairy tales present dark and fantastical themes in a conversational manner, allowing them to be approached without becoming overwhelming. Similarly, Andrews’ paintings pursue a tension between apparent beauty and a layered, unsettling symbolic landscape, offering viewers the opportunity to explore its deepest and most hidden recesses.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the first monograph dedicated to the painterly work of Iain Andrews, edited by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, will be published by Maretti Manfredi Edizioni.
INFORMATION
Iain Andrews
Whispers from the Red Room
Curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi
Venue
Galleria Gaburro
Via Cerva 25, Milan
Press Preview
Wednesday, 25 February 2026
10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
In the presence of the artist
Opening Reception
Wednesday, 25 February 2026
6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Exhibition Dates
26 February – 30 May 2026
Opening Hours
Tuesday–Saturday
10:00 AM–1:00 PM / 2:00 PM–7:00 PM
Free entrance
Press Office
Matteo Scabeni
matteo@galleriagaburro.com
Tel. +39 02 99262529
