In his paintings, Danny Rolph samples disparate cultural and historical references, from kids’ clothes patterning to particle physics, producing non-hierarchical and chaotic abstract fields. For his inaugural solo exhibition at the Eden Rock Gallery in St Barths, Rolph presents a selection of large oil and acrylic paintings on canvas that continue his investigation into the language of collage.

Unlike the nocturnal, saturated blues of Rolph’s multi-layered triplewall paintings, the pastel backgrounds of the expansive canvases evoke the light of day. Streaked and stained, their celestial hues are inspired by the skies of Tiepolo, just one of the artist’s broad-reaching sources. As with the Venetian’s buoyant frescoes, Rolph’s candy colours and free-floating forms imbue a sense of fantasy. However, any notions of whimsy are deceptive. Rolph likens the revelatory elements against the dawn-like backdrop to Enlightenment. Meanwhile, the forms and plasticity of colour emerge as jarring, discordant. The work maintains a logic, albeit one of fragmentation.