Take your pick | 9 April 2008

Robert Dukes (born 1965) is one of our finest younger artists. Now enjoying his second solo show with Browse & Darby (19 Cork Street, W1, until 2 May), this painter in the great tradition of European realist art proves that he can deliver the goods while continuing to break new ground. The chief joy of his exhibition is the lucid and succinct colour. Just look at the run of still-life paintings down the right-hand wall of the gallery as you enter. In front of you is the delicious ‘Pink Rose’, sensual and particular, and then comes a whole cornucopia of individually painted fruit. Here are paintings of startling originality and succulent paintwork: ‘Small Green Lemon’, ‘Red Grapefruit’, ‘Two Satsumas’, ‘Cadmium Lemon’, ‘Orange on a Shaving Mirror’ and ‘Lime Study’. But Dukes doesn’t only paint fruit. Among the other subjects on show are portraits, a pair of scissors and a langoustine.