Igor Moritz

Thierry Goldberg is pleased to present Roses and Castles, an online exhibition of works by Igor Moritz. The exhibition will be on view from February 25th through March 21st, 2021.

Roses and Castles, comprised of seven oil on linen paintings and three colored pencil drawings, captures the subtle thoughts and feelings inhabiting the minds of Igor Moritz, his friends, and his family. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Moritz would repeatedly paint those closest to him to document their changes over time, not just physically, but emotionally – as felt through color and imagined surroundings. By portraying intimate figures in his life Moritz keeps track of how his close circle evolves and how the individuals themselves change. Accordingly, Moritz’s paintings act as a visual diary: capturing the people and energy of his surroundings and his subjective experiences in his life.

Similar to how Moritz returns to his subjects, Moritz also returns to himself. Included among his portraits are By the Canal (2021) and Bench (2021), the artist’s self-portraits in the exhibition. Moritz works on a self-portrait each month, cycling back a dozen times a year to study his own face and how it changes, just like how he does for his other sitters. His self-portraits also act as a marker of time and development in his practice. By painting the same subject (himself) ­as a monthly ritual, he can track how his practice develops through time, technically and creatively. In this way, Moritz is setting boundaries in order to push them. By painting the same subject multiple times, he must always confront a new means to represent them. These new representations, thick with coats of paint, metaphorically show how Moritz is layering on new stories and interpretations of his sitters and himself.

Since the energy in Moritz’s works is often dictated by where he is living, his current life in London informed by the pandemic has invoked a gloomy blue tint to many of his works in the exhibition. Reflecting on his surroundings, Moritz has primarily portrayed his subjects in gritty London streets and parks. In other works such as Roses and Castles (2021), Moritz paints his subjects by canals and infused with colors and designs resembling the iconic British narrowboat style. The melding of these two quintessentially British visual languages places Moritz’s portraits properly in their London context.

While playing with these two visual languages, Moritz simultaneously uses color and gesture to portray a romantic loneliness and introspection in his figures. Most of his figures stand and sit alone, and even when grouped together, like in Talk (2021), they seem internally alone. This brings up a compelling dichotomy in Moritz’s work: he creates scenes in which figures appear in moments alone, when in reality, it is moments of connection that lead to these perceptive portrayals.


Igor Moritz (b. 1996, Lublin, Poland) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. He has had solo exhibitions at Nil Gallery, Paris, France and Unisex Gallery, Montreal, Canada. Mortiz’s work has been included in group exhibitions at Lundgren Gallery, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Guts Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Gedney Common, London, United Kingdom; Beers, London, United Kingdom; and Delphian Gallery, London, United Kingdom among others. His work is in the collection of Espacio SOLO, Madrid Spain and Rad Hourani Foundation, Montreal, Canada. This is Moritz’s first show with Thierry Goldberg Gallery.

For more information please email or call the gallery at + 1. 212.228.7569 or info@thierrygoldberg.com.