Paul Winstanley

Utility

21 February – 4 April, 2026
Opening Saturday 21 February, 5-7pm

1301PE is pleased to announce its ninth solo exhibition with acclaimed British painter Paul Winstanley entitled Utility. For the past four decades, Winstanley’s paintings have investigated vacant spaces, the commonplace, and the dystopic, and, more fundamentally, painting’s ability to transform these familiar and occasionally melancholic landscapes into the sublime.

“Reality can often seem dismal and lacklustre compared with images of it. Pictures of all sorts mythologize reality, enlarge it, give it meaning.” – Paul Winstanley

In Utility, Winstanley’s new paintings continue or return to familiar themes: the veiled window view onto nature, the empty lobby, the graffitied subterranean pedestrian walkway. These empty interiors feel suspended in time. They are waiting; calmly yet insistently questioning how images, spaces, and meaning are produced.

Paul Winstanley was born in Manchester in 1954. He lives and works in London. His first retrospective Paintings 1989-2007 was held at ARTSPACE in Auckland, New Zealand. Institutional solo exhibitions of Winstanley's paintings have been presented at Tate Britain and Camden Arts Centre in London. Selected exhibitions include Opposing Forms, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2025); Contemporary Collecting: David Hockney to Cornelia Parker, The British Museum, London (2024); Family Affair, Bunker Art Space, West Palm Beach (2023); Conversations, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015); Aesthetic Harmonies: Whistler in Context, Colby Museum of Art, Waterville (2015); Art and Existence, Esbjerg Kunstmuseum, Esbjerg (2013); Lifelike, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The Blankton Museum of Art, Austin (2012/2013); The Deer, Le Consortium, Dijon (2012); Out of Focus: After Gerhard Richter, Kunsthalle Hamburg (2011); Conflicting Tales: Subjectivity, Burger Collection, Berlin (2009); Self as Selves, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2009); Inside Architecture, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2008); 8 Visions, One Dream, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2008); and Telling Tales: Narrative Impulses in Recent Art, Tate, Liverpool (2001).

Winstanley's work is represented in numerous institutional collections including British Museum, London; British Government Art Collection, London; Burger Collection, Berlin; Fonds National d'art Contemporain, Paris; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Rochechouart; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musee d'art Contemporain, Sintra; New York City Public Library, New York; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Tate, London; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.