Nexus of opposites

Francesco Clemente (born Naples 1952) began his rise to prominence in this country with two exhibitions at the Royal Academy — the famous New Spirit in Painting of 1981, when figuration was officially relaunched on London (though for some it had never gone away); and Italian Art in the 20th Century eight years later. A third RA venture was a Clemente solo show in 1991, a touring exhibition entitled Three Worlds, memorable as much for its plethora of exciting and witty images (many in pastel or watercolour), as for the beautiful girls thronging the private view. Clemente has long been a fashion icon; in him popular art and high art meet and mingle. His world is a nexus of opposites: the historical and contemporary, abstract and narrative, masculine and feminine, human and animal; and, most importantly, spiritual and material.

This is the first Clemente exhibition in England for seven years, and it looks pretty impressive. Given the title of the show, with its echoes of desert island meditation, these 14 paintings may be taken as companions of solitude. This enjoyable suite of pictures was specially conceived for the elegant new Blain|Southern space on the corner of Hanover Square and Hanover Street, and it has all the hyper-sophistication required of a modern Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked in one of our great contemporary cities, perhaps London, New York or Tokyo, where it is possible to be more lonely than on the most remote atoll.

Since the 1970s, Clemente has divided his time between New York and Varanasi in India, a cultural oscillation he feeds directly into his art. The imagery is richly varied, with echoes of surrealism in general, and Magritte in particular, mingling with the Buddhist mandala and what look like mythical scenes from an alternative history of the West.