Exploring Warner’s longstanding interest in loneliness, the exhibition also marks a new
chapter in his ongoing collaboration with SHOWstudio, as his traditionally analogue
practice moves into the possibilities offered by technology.
Within each person, Warner searches for a sense of loneliness, a condition he sees as
inherent to individual experience. He draws us closely into reflection around our own inner
states. In his work, we are confronted with something familiar, the private distance that
exists within each person.
Across the exhibition, colour and surface become central to this sense of the unknown
within us. Warner uses colour to establish atmosphere, while smudging and abstraction
allow emotion to emerge without explicit description. His subjects remain recognisable
but never entirely available to us.
Figurative Introspection follows Warner’s recent collaboration with Nick Knight and
SHOWstudio for H&M’s H&M&YOU&I, a fashion presentation exploring human
relationships and technology. The exhibition brings together a selection of the original
works Warner created for the interactive, which formed the basis of the digital experience.
Developed by SHOWstudio under Knight’s direction for H&M, the interactive invites
audiences to participate in fashion imagery rather than solely observe it. Built from
photography and Warner’s illustrations, the technology responds to an individual’s
clothing, movement and expression, transforming the imagery in real time. Visitors to the
exhibition can experience the interactive in the gallery.
The works presented in Figurative Introspection reveal the physical starting point of this
process: analogue paintings and drawings that were translated into a responsive digital
experience while retaining Warner’s hand and artistic gesture.
Figurative Introspection brings these trajectories together, presenting a practice shaped
over decades while looking towards what it might yet become. Through SHOWstudio’s
ongoing collaboration with Warner, the exhibition considers how painting and emerging
technologies can expand the forms through which fashion imagery can be made and
experienced.
Curated by Thea Monteiro