Dexter Dalwood »Stoned Crazy (Kubla Khan)«

Stoned Crazy (Kubla Khan), 2011 evokes a Conradian upriver narrative, but does so without the motif of descent into a “heart of darkness”. Where Joseph Conrad used a wrought narrative structure to set the archetype, Dalwood lets it be hinted at through the coalescence of ostensibly discrete formal elements. Screenprints of a boat after Canaletto line up suggestively with the intervals of a cartography of marijuana leaves representing the Lake District. Rendered at different scales and in different colours and factures, the palmate leaves initially parse as dense tropical vegetation.

A detail from Sigmar Polke’s Alice im Wunderland, 1972 is lifted directly and deployed as a metonym for Lake District resident and poet Samuel Coleridge, who famously was interrupted by a person on business from a nearby village while writing Kubla Khan immediately after waking from an opium dream. Coleridge left the work unfinished and “Person from Porlock” has since become a figure of speech for someone who interrupts another’s creative process.

– George Morony, 2026

Dexter Dalwood (born Bristol, UK, 1960) he moved to Mexico City after a residency in Oaxaca in 2017.

He made a series titled An Inadequate Painted History of Mexico on his return to London, which has since featured in the touring show, 'Esto No Me Pertenece' at Centro de las Artes San Agustín, Oaxaca, Mexico and Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City, Mexico (2021-22).

His work has featured in recent group exhibitions including: ‘The Paradoxes of Internationalism. Part I’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2023); ‘Modern Media Networks: Painting and Mass Media’, Tate Modern, London, UK (2020); ‘Hello World. Revising a Collection’, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2018); ‘Michael Jackson: On the Wall’, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK touring to Grand Palais, Paris, France, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany and Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (all 2018-19). Major solo museum shows include: Kunsthaus Centre PasquArt, Biel, Switzerland (2013); CAC Málaga, Spain (2010); FRAC Champagne-Ardennes, Reims, France (2010) and Tate, St. Ives, UK (2010). In 2025 Dalwood co-curated the first UK solo exhibition of work by the renowned Mexican artist José María Velasco at the National Gallery, London, UK, which travelled to The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN, USA (2025-26).