Charles Avery: Where Rocco Found a Dead Monster or The Land of the Downcast Eyes
GRIMM is pleased to announce Where Rocco Found a Dead Monster or The Land of the Downcast Eyes, a solo exhibition by Charles Avery, on view at the Amsterdam gallery from October 9 through November 14, 2026.
Charles Avery has dedicated himself to a singular world-building project through the depiction of an imaginary island. The Islanders is a detailed portrayal of the inhabitants, topography, and culture of a fictional island, formed extensively through drawings, writings, objects, architecture and design. More recently, Avery has introduced 'The Eidolon' into his work. Here, the sprawling complexity that characterises The Islanders is replaced by a radical economy of means.
Over the course of the twenty-year project, Avery’s imaginary world has been calibrated around 'The Island', the center of Avery's constructed world; located among an archipelago of innumerable constituents. The gateway to the Island is the town of Onomatopoeia, a highly-textured metropolis that bears the hallmarks of an evolving urban landscape. Once the stepping off point for the pioneers who first came, the town experienced rapid transformation from a colonial outpost, to boom town, bustling metropolis, depression-ravaged slum, and finally a regenerated city of culture and tourist destination. The culture and fabric of the Island continue to evolve, further illuminated with each successive work.
The spirit of Avery's imaginary Island is highly engaged with the disciplines and currency of mathematics, philosophy, economics, and anthropology, and he takes inspiration broadly from literature and comedy.
Key elements from his drawings are rendered in physical form in his sculptures and installations. Instilled in many of the works is the central theme of the horizon line, a continuum that to the Islanders holds a magnetic attraction. It represents a conundrum: visible yet constituted of nothing, drawing them into an intangible enigma. As Avery has said, the Island is "a gymnasium for the imagination and an earnest attempt to align the experience of the viewer with that of the artist."
