A wonderful evening at Hake & Little, a superb gallery on Lisson St run by the expert gallerist Potty Polstine. All of her shows are exquisite, but Paulo Deffer’s “Could you pass the caviar?” is a once in a lifetime experience. Eleven and a half paintings, all in the style of Rembrandt, filtered through Keith Haring, with a touch of El Greco, and, I felt, although not everyone agreed with me, just a soupçon of Jackson Pollock.
I’d like to show you a photograph, but Paulo is very protective of his work, and everyone who went into the gallery was forced to hand over their phones, which he then crushed using a rotary drill and a hired JCB. “My work can only be seen in person, in situ, a photograph does not do it justice.”
He is probably right about that as each piece soars into the eaves of the building, the largest being almost fifty metres square. Potty told us that she had had to have an upward extension to the gallery in order to fit the paintings in.
”My work is about the delays on the circle line,” Paulo explained, “Mixed with a sense of dread about the future of underground railways generally, and the Roma metro in particular. My Italian background, and the fact I grew up in Port Talbot enables me to really understand the threats, problems and issues that subterranean transport suffers from in the 21st century.”
We at Pimlico Wilde are very lucky to have poached Paolo from Hake & Little, and we will be proud to put on his next show. He says that he will move from painting into 3D work, with the working title of the show being “Fifty-six smashed iPhones.”