Charlie
Charlie Burtenshaw
Charlie Burtenshaw
16 May – 20 June 2026
PACHECO opens with Charlie, a solo exhibition by Charlie Burtenshaw, the artist's first presentation with the gallery.
Images in Charlie Burtenshaw's paintings do not arrive all at once, nor do they offer themselves with the assurance that landscapes usually promise. They emerge slowly, almost reluctantly, from a surface that seems to hesitate before allowing anything to appear. At first there is only the sensation of looking, the eye moving across a field of paint where forms begin to gather without fully declaring themselves. A horizon becomes faintly perceptible. The outline of a structure suggests itself. For a moment the image seems prepared to settle, as though the painting had decided what it wished to show, and then, just as quietly, that certainty loosens again.
The buildings that recur throughout these works are not unusual ones. They are houses, barns, the kinds of structures that exist in rural landscapes for practical reasons and little else, erected simply to endure wind, weather and time. In another painting they would serve as the stable coordinates of the scene, organising distance and giving the viewer somewhere to rest their gaze. Here they behave differently. Their forms seem pressed against the surface rather than set within space. What should anchor the landscape instead appears tentative, as if the structures themselves were slowly withdrawing from the place they occupy.
This uncertainty does not come from the motif alone but from the way the painting is made. Burtenshaw builds the surface patiently, allowing layers of paint to accumulate until the canvas carries the density of many previous decisions. Earlier images are never entirely removed. They remain within the work, faintly active beneath later revisions, so that the painting retains a memory of its own earlier attempts. What finally becomes visible is therefore never singular. It is the result of a process in which other possibilities continue to persist below the surface.
The landscapes that result from this process remain difficult to hold onto. The barn, the farmhouse, the low grammar of agricultural necessity have long served British painting as images of rootedness and belonging, a landscape that knows who owns it. Burtenshaw's paintings offer no such assurance. Buildings stand where they should logically belong, yet something about them continues to feel slightly displaced. Recognition is therefore possible, but never entirely secure, and the viewer remains in the quiet uncertainty of looking at something that is still, in some sense, in the process of becoming visible.
Charlie Burtenshaw (b. 1996, Medway, UK) lives and works in London.
Solo and Duo Exhibitions include Charlie, Pacheco, London, UK (2026); Moon Palace, Des Bains, London, UK (2025).
Group Exhibitions include Dry Cleaning, Max Radford, London, UK (2025); between the object and the floor, Dorp, Bath, UK (2025); Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Hardboiled, Chicago, USA (2025); Group Show, Duarte Sequeira, London, UK (2024).
Images in Charlie Burtenshaw's paintings do not arrive all at once, nor do they offer themselves with the assurance that landscapes usually promise. They emerge slowly, almost reluctantly, from a surface that seems to hesitate before allowing anything to appear. At first there is only the sensation of looking, the eye moving across a field of paint where forms begin to gather without fully declaring themselves. A horizon becomes faintly perceptible. The outline of a structure suggests itself. For a moment the image seems prepared to settle, as though the painting had decided what it wished to show, and then, just as quietly, that certainty loosens again.
The buildings that recur throughout these works are not unusual ones. They are houses, barns, the kinds of structures that exist in rural landscapes for practical reasons and little else, erected simply to endure wind, weather and time. In another painting they would serve as the stable coordinates of the scene, organising distance and giving the viewer somewhere to rest their gaze. Here they behave differently. Their forms seem pressed against the surface rather than set within space. What should anchor the landscape instead appears tentative, as if the structures themselves were slowly withdrawing from the place they occupy.
This uncertainty does not come from the motif alone but from the way the painting is made. Burtenshaw builds the surface patiently, allowing layers of paint to accumulate until the canvas carries the density of many previous decisions. Earlier images are never entirely removed. They remain within the work, faintly active beneath later revisions, so that the painting retains a memory of its own earlier attempts. What finally becomes visible is therefore never singular. It is the result of a process in which other possibilities continue to persist below the surface.
The landscapes that result from this process remain difficult to hold onto. The barn, the farmhouse, the low grammar of agricultural necessity have long served British painting as images of rootedness and belonging, a landscape that knows who owns it. Burtenshaw's paintings offer no such assurance. Buildings stand where they should logically belong, yet something about them continues to feel slightly displaced. Recognition is therefore possible, but never entirely secure, and the viewer remains in the quiet uncertainty of looking at something that is still, in some sense, in the process of becoming visible.
Charlie Burtenshaw (b. 1996, Medway, UK) lives and works in London.
Solo and Duo Exhibitions include Charlie, Pacheco, London, UK (2026); Moon Palace, Des Bains, London, UK (2025).
Group Exhibitions include Dry Cleaning, Max Radford, London, UK (2025); between the object and the floor, Dorp, Bath, UK (2025); Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Hardboiled, Chicago, USA (2025); Group Show, Duarte Sequeira, London, UK (2024).