For the final exhibition in the Encounters series, Tim Ayres presents a large triptych: untitled ("mixing memory and desire"). The presentation will be on view this week during regular opening hours. The artist will be present daily from 16.00 until 18.00. Furthermore, we will host a small finissage on Sunday, November 17 from 16:00.
Ayres’ triptych, Untitled (“mixing memory and desire”), is rooted in a line from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land—a line that, though omitted from the final version by the poet’s then-wife, still resonates with the themes of the piece. The Hyacinth Garden recalls the enigmatic "Hyacinth Girl," who, within Eliot’s poem, represents unattainable longing and a love both distant and unrealized.
Ayres seems to reflect on life through the glimmer of memory—not nostalgia, but rather a contemplation of the desires that were once vivid and perhaps remain so. In his work, radio towers reach out to transmit, a garden holds the memory of something significant, and an unsolved equation lingers with an ambiguity beyond mathematics. The result is a profound space defined by both memory and desire, mirroring the melancholy at the heart of Eliot’s verse and, ultimately, of Ayres’ work.
While Ayres describes this triptych as a "love painting," it’s far from a conventional portrayal of romance. Instead, it evokes a love that remains just beyond reach—yet entirely real, resonating vividly in its own quiet vibration. One is left with the impression of something that, though it never came to pass, feels as if it might still be unfolding.
