Naked Island 96, William Reinsch, Oil on aluminium, 30 x 40 cm, 2025
Twilight Contemporary is excited to present Naked Island, the debut solo exhibition at the gallery by London-based artist William Reinsch.
Naked Island is the name Reinsch gives to a world he has been building over many years, drawn from his internal psyche. A world and new body of work that offers glimpses and fragments into a place that is normally kept hidden. The island Reinsch presents to us is naked and exposed.
Reinsch began painting in this autobiographical mode after a tough period in his young life. Drawing and painting became a vehicle to communicate experiences he could not easily put into words, with early works given to his therapist as a means of understanding what he was experiencing internally. This approach has never left his practice, with each piece becoming a new act of exposure.
The recurring figures across the exhibition are naked and vulnerable, often covering their faces or bodies, hiding behind blankets or turning inward. These are gestures of physical withdrawal and self-protection that speak to the complexities of emotional vulnerability and strife.
Materiality plays a critical role in this act of exposure. Reinsch frequently works on aluminium, allowing paint to slide and fracture across the surface, producing very gestural marks. The relative passivity of aluminium enables speed and instinct, whereas canvas introduces resistance.
Reinsch’s most recent works in this body return to canvas, where he has embraced greater struggle, seeking friction and difficulty as a way to push the work into even more complex emotional territory.
The landscapes in Naked Island are sparse and unsettled. There is an atmosphere in his beautifully eerie landscapes that speaks to something dystopian, dark, and empty. While they are empty of buildings and human structure, Reinsch has spoken of the inspiration he has taken from his upbringing in urban Basildon.
Reinsch’s influences range across painting and cinema. He has spoken of Justin Mortimer and Phil Hale alongside Goya, Van Gogh, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and Walter Sickert as significant inspirations. Stanley Kubrick is a central influence. You will notice, as you walk around the exhibition, that rather like Kubrick, Reinsch allows us glimpses, or stills, that focus on the journey rather than clear conclusions.
As one spends time with his works, an impending sense emerges that Reinsch might not actually be fully in control of this world. That he might be a vessel, allowing something less conscious to surface. In this way, Naked Island is not a closed series but an ongoing psychological landscape, a place the artist will continue to return to.
Words & curation by Sam Hanson
Naked Island 95, William Reinsch, Oil on aluminium, 30 x 40 cm, 2025
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