Iain Dean: Tongue against teeth

For Tongue against teeth, Iain Dean presents an entropic approach to his painting and ceramics based practice. The exhibition operates as a follow-up to Dean’s 2023 solo exhibition Boo Boo Ragout (mistake stew), an expression of self-deprecating pathos and sardonic humility via twenty-four tightly packed paintings in a bright green gallery.

Exploring the cosmic implications of Boo Boo Ragout, Tongue against teeth delivers an equally high impact presentation, albeit through just two artworks; a singular, unstretched painting traversing most of the gallery wall; and an unfired ceramic pot. The heat stress of the mistake stew has inevitably given way to a release of Boo Boo tensions. Tongue against teeth is a submission to this rupture – precarious, indifferent, a signifier of inevitable collapse.

Iain Dean applies a distinct vocabulary of colour, shape, text and symbol to paintings, prints and sculptures. These works share a cartoon-bright palette and seemingly casual and intuitive approach to form and mark-making, offset by self-deprecating pathos and deadpan references to modernist formalism. Dean aims to create ‘non-hierarchical, non-judgemental images’ that ‘free-associate’ between the culturally familiar and privately meaningful, operating simultaneously as a joke and an homage.