Charles Avery
Where Rocco Found a Dead Monster OR The Land of the Downcast Eyes

October 9 – November 14, 2026

Leidsegracht 38-40, Amsterdam (NL)

For two decades Charles Avery devoted his practice to describing — through drawing, writing and sculptural objects — the inhabitants, topography and culture of a fictional Island. Then, in 2024, he set The Islanders aside to begin a new project which he refers to as The Eidolons. As the artist has stated: 'Within this matrix, one picture — or proposition — gives rise to the next, establishing a community of interrelated forms  —  a primitive universe of simple and numerable parts, which will develop to create an utterly legible account of its own existence.’

In this solo exhibition, Avery presents a suite of works that provide a conceptual bridge between the two opposite worlds of The Islanders and The Eidolons — a way by which we can relate these apparently discrete and incommensurate visions.

The scene of this co-existence is a non-place called Where Rocco Found a Dead Monster, an endless and monotonous wilderness defined by vivid skies, arid steppes and little else. Beneath the horizon there is occasional life: meadows of white flowers bend in the wind, ambiguous beasts graze, travellers, herders and a frontiersman pass by. That which is above the horizon is given to the Eidolons: strange yet simple, these impassive, ethereal forms shimmer and shift against the moody sky.

Within this hybrid pictorial space, it is ambiguous as to whether the two existences are accessible to — or even aware of — one another. Perhaps the Eidolons are just so familiar to the people that traverse the plain, as common as the weather, that they don’t bother to look up. Maybe the Eidolons are visible only to us, the viewer, with an insight conferred by the third dimension.

As with all of his work, Avery creates a delicate semantic balance, a game of dimensions, that refuses to commit to a particular reading, whilst insisting on meaning for meaning’s sake.

For enquiries regarding the featured works or for more information,
please email: enquiry@grimmgallery.com