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until 05.12. | #4845ARTatBerlin | Verena Kerfin Gallery shows from Friday, 7 November 2025 the solo exhibition “Park Bench Paintings” by the artist Toby Ursell.
British painter Toby Ursell (b. 1981, Cheltenham) transforms the park bench into a painterly display and a stage for images. A continuous wall drawing shows Olive Oyl at both ends of an endless bench; on its seat rest small oil paintings – spinach cans turned into vases, coffee pots, Popeye & Olivia – motifs oscillating between everyday object, brand image, and cartoon.
Ursell weaves together comic and painting, commodity and still life, humor and form. The bench becomes a hierarchy-free frieze: it replaces the pedestal, brings the works closer to the viewer, and situates them within a social topography of picnic, waiting, and conversation. In their serial arrangement, tonal shifts, lettering, and painterly texture come to the fore.
Following exhibitions in London and Berlin (Oyl Paintings, Verena Kerfin Gallery, 2021), Ursell once again reveals his “gentle anarchism” – painting as an open system that questions museum conventions while keeping the images precise, sensuous, and utterly present.
Opening: Friday, 7 November 2025, 5:00–9:00 pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 7 November until Friday, 5 December 2025
Image caption title: Toby Ursell, Bather, 2022, Oil on panel, 65 x 55 cm © the artist / Courtesy Verena Kerfin Gallery
Exhibition Toby Ursell – Verena Kerfin Gallery | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
