Nicola Bealing’s playful approach to the canvas is strangely juxtaposed by her paintings evoking a stranger, darker study of the male. In her new exhibition at the Cadogan Contemporary, there are the colourful injections: Adam and Eve with Yellow Birds (oil on linen) and Funny Farm (oil on canvas) both of which lift their images from the wall and into the imagination of the spectator, while examples such as the dark but beautiful Rose Heads and Planet focus on the human male head.

Rose Heads shows the blushing fuchsia pinks of falling rose buds, forming into male heads as they reach the base of the canvas. The background to this scene is black, bringing to the forefront the pile of heads and their inscrutable expressions. The ball of compacted male head and waving limbs in Planet reminds me of the Vermin Death Star by David Falconer (2000-2002) at The Saatchi Gallery. There’s an eeriness about the construction: hundreds of heads squeezed together to form a ball. Gesturing limbs appear from the outer edges almost clambering free, or signalling for help. Each head is pressed against another in a tight, confined space. The rats in Falconer’s sculpture are similarly confined together, pressured to form a shape of the artist’s request.

The theme is continued with Audience in which countless males appear to be smiling while all viewing something (perhaps the standing spectator?). They sit in rows dressed in murky blues and all are painted with the same ovate, bald head. Once again we see males together (absent of females) confined to a space. Their convivial expressions merge into each other as the painted faces absorb towards the back of the crowd. A similar idea of confined males in shown in In Deep Water. This time the naked male forms stretch, kick and wriggle in the deep cerulean depth of the ocean.

Bealing’s other works revolve around animals and their complexion of colour. Dog Tower (oil on board) shows 16 dogs forming a tower, with 4 at the base and 1 single (the smallest pooch) at the summit. Their tawny and amber colours are mixed with red-yellow coats and the pale beige chest of a struggling dog at the base. Crocodiles Suspended is perhaps the brightest of the exhibition. 19 crocodiles suspend from what appears to be red ribbon. They hang straight without a swinging motion, all facing left. Some with their jaws open, but most are closed. There’s a particularly evil looking croc at the front, and although his jaw is firmly closed, his eye is conspiring an evil and immediate escape.

Crocodiles Suspended reminds me of a Quentin Blake drawing of The Enormous Crocodile. Bealing creates a beautiful painting with three primary colours. Green on yellow sits well, while the introduction of red – in order to suspend the beasts – lifts the crocs from the canvas, and determines that you don’t step too close to the scaly snappers.

There are some beautifully painted flower bunches however it’s Bright Beach (oil on canvas), situated at the back of the Cadogan Contemporary that is Bealing’s greatest work. It’s a painstaking study detailing individuals relaxing, reclining and ‘sunning-it’ on a beach. Men role and turn in their shorts, trunks and g-string, and women bath on their fronts, backs and even topless. A couple lean across from their towels and kiss, another sees the man apply sunscreen to a woman’s back. Children paddle in the milky sea while elders dip in their toes. At the front of the beach towel line (closest to the ocean) a man is buried under the sand, a bucket and spade rest on the sandy mound. This is a superb work. Intense and charismatic. It’s no wonder that (like many other pieces in this new exhibition) there’s an orange sticky dot next to the piece: it’s already sold.

Bright Beach is a playful, well-executed, individual study of a scene we’re all familiar with. Along with Crocodiles Suspended it’s this exhibitions defining piece and worth paying a visit to the Cadogan Contemporary to see for yourself.

By David J Constable

@davidjconstable