WEIGHT
Duo exhibition with Magnus Westwell, curated by Brooke Wilson.
Duo exhibition with Magnus Westwell, curated by Brooke Wilson.
Number 1 Main Road, Berlin, Germany.
21.03.25 - 13.04.25
21.03.25 - 13.04.25
Instalation views: Marcus Nelson and Magnus Westwell, WEIGHT, 2025, Number 1 Main Road, Berlin, Germany.
In an exchange of artistic vocabularies, ‘WEIGHT’ brings together a new suite of paintings by Marcus Nelson and a debut film and sound piece by Magnus Westwell. Uniting their independent vernaculars of dance and painting, a dialogue of diverse artistic experience coalesces in a singular installation in which representations of the self come to multiply.
Rhythmic movement and repetitive forms construct the multifaceted landscape in which this installation sits. Percolating amongst the dual mediums, the individual becomes the plural in a group submerged by hypnotic influence. Forming a continuous wave of movement, free-flowing corporeal forms expand and pulsate, dissolving into one unified organism, blurring the boundaries between paint and moving image. This dissolvement illustrates the body's duality as both a personal site of expression and a conduit for shared experience and emotion. In Westwell and Nelson’s work, the body becomes a medium for nonverbal communication, translating complex internal states into tangible movement.
For Westwell, absence and liminality are embodied in visceral crowd choreography and regenerative motion, where individual and collective tensions collide. And Then Gone (2025) evokes a perpetual flux of existence - fractured, entwined, and endlessly looping. Westwell’s ensemble of dancers surge through shifting synchronies, their bodies caught between order and unraveling, precision and abandon. In this, the unconscious mind surfaces, revealing a delicate tension between autonomy and belonging, fragility and force. The score, resonating throughout the gallery, holds stillness and weight in balance, unfolding in layers of orchestral ambience and fragmented decay. This work is a pivotal moment in Westwell’s practice, born from an ongoing dialogue between movement and sound, where choreography and composition merge and evolve - reflecting cycles of memory, time, and transcendence within an ephemeral, fleeting landscape.
Reflecting these ideas, Nelson’s large-scale paintings – Crowd (2025) – disrupt the body and its subsequent movement into rhythmic bars, breaking the format of the composition into smaller panels, which can be rearranged into new sequences by the audience. By inviting the spectator to become an active part of the work, Nelson opens a dialogue around autonomous movement and the authoritative modes external influence can have over our psyche, referencing crowd dynamics. Reinforcing this, his loose application of paint represents the psychological dissolution of the self: figures, no longer distinct or isolated, fall into one another, reflecting how individual identity can become blurred amongst collective forces. In a direct exploration of performance, the compositional arrangements in Nelson’s quadriptych are inspired by Westwell’s choreography. Reinterpreting the varying shapes produced by the dancers, Nelson uses his own body as a medium to explore ideas of self-representation, offering a fluid and non-linear way to communicate internal experiences, emotions, and perceptions of identity. Loops of movement, multiplicity and sound echo throughout this exhibition, changing hands and shifting between artist, audience, dancer and painter. Set within a dark void, both artists's shared interest in theatrical scenery is reinforced by their mutual treatment of light. With all figures emerging from the darkness, limbs are illuminated by subtle lustres and cast shadows amongst the dense figurative landscape, where the audience, too, becomes part of the crowd.
Text by Brooke Wilson
︎ Number 1 Main Road
In an exchange of artistic vocabularies, ‘WEIGHT’ brings together a new suite of paintings by Marcus Nelson and a debut film and sound piece by Magnus Westwell. Uniting their independent vernaculars of dance and painting, a dialogue of diverse artistic experience coalesces in a singular installation in which representations of the self come to multiply.
Rhythmic movement and repetitive forms construct the multifaceted landscape in which this installation sits. Percolating amongst the dual mediums, the individual becomes the plural in a group submerged by hypnotic influence. Forming a continuous wave of movement, free-flowing corporeal forms expand and pulsate, dissolving into one unified organism, blurring the boundaries between paint and moving image. This dissolvement illustrates the body's duality as both a personal site of expression and a conduit for shared experience and emotion. In Westwell and Nelson’s work, the body becomes a medium for nonverbal communication, translating complex internal states into tangible movement.
For Westwell, absence and liminality are embodied in visceral crowd choreography and regenerative motion, where individual and collective tensions collide. And Then Gone (2025) evokes a perpetual flux of existence - fractured, entwined, and endlessly looping. Westwell’s ensemble of dancers surge through shifting synchronies, their bodies caught between order and unraveling, precision and abandon. In this, the unconscious mind surfaces, revealing a delicate tension between autonomy and belonging, fragility and force. The score, resonating throughout the gallery, holds stillness and weight in balance, unfolding in layers of orchestral ambience and fragmented decay. This work is a pivotal moment in Westwell’s practice, born from an ongoing dialogue between movement and sound, where choreography and composition merge and evolve - reflecting cycles of memory, time, and transcendence within an ephemeral, fleeting landscape.
Reflecting these ideas, Nelson’s large-scale paintings – Crowd (2025) – disrupt the body and its subsequent movement into rhythmic bars, breaking the format of the composition into smaller panels, which can be rearranged into new sequences by the audience. By inviting the spectator to become an active part of the work, Nelson opens a dialogue around autonomous movement and the authoritative modes external influence can have over our psyche, referencing crowd dynamics. Reinforcing this, his loose application of paint represents the psychological dissolution of the self: figures, no longer distinct or isolated, fall into one another, reflecting how individual identity can become blurred amongst collective forces. In a direct exploration of performance, the compositional arrangements in Nelson’s quadriptych are inspired by Westwell’s choreography. Reinterpreting the varying shapes produced by the dancers, Nelson uses his own body as a medium to explore ideas of self-representation, offering a fluid and non-linear way to communicate internal experiences, emotions, and perceptions of identity. Loops of movement, multiplicity and sound echo throughout this exhibition, changing hands and shifting between artist, audience, dancer and painter. Set within a dark void, both artists's shared interest in theatrical scenery is reinforced by their mutual treatment of light. With all figures emerging from the darkness, limbs are illuminated by subtle lustres and cast shadows amongst the dense figurative landscape, where the audience, too, becomes part of the crowd.
Text by Brooke Wilson
︎ Number 1 Main Road