A chance to meet with artist Gareth Ernst as he talks about his Kings of Berlin exhibition at Martin Browne Contemporary, 15 Hampden Street, Paddington, NSW 2021. Gareth Ernst’s work focuses on the intimate and fleeting, on mortality, desire, surveillance, and masculinity. Like the writings of Jean Genet, Gareth Ernst’s paintings, drawings and videos are illicit love letters. They deal with the secret and the underground, touching on the pornographic and the criminal. They are rapid, urgent and complete, revealing secret Worlds parallel to our own.

His studies of the human form are uncompromising and direct. Gareth’s work disrupts the tradition of idealising the male/female form, and instead uses it as a vehicle for exploring the themes of power, vulnerability and innocence.