This is, in part, rooted in the artist’s interest in modernist sculptures, in the work of artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Jean Arp who created pureforms that explored texture, movement and space, but also in Scandinavian landscape painters such as Anna Ancher, Kitty Kielland and Amaldus Nielsen who captured the ephemeral qualities of light. The latter’s influence is most clearly seen in the backdrops of Morell’s paintings which evoke specific temporalities while also conjuring a slightly surreal space. It is this disconnect from reality that allows us to approach the work without expectations, to view each image on its own terms, without needing to define or categorise what’s before us.

At the same time, Morell provides us with a way into each painting, something to hold on to or follow, a tether. He produces a sense of harmony between foreground and background not only through his chosen colour palette, but also through the shimmering, diaphanous brushstrokes that wrap around the central structure. These marks are created using transparent pigments that are applied quickly and precisely in the alla prima (wet-on-wet) technique. As such, they cannot be easily erased or recreated, exposing the movement of the artist’s hand across the canvas or as  Morell puts it, ‘a process of trial and error, the tense dance that happens in the studio.’

The show’s title points to this tension as one that is both sensorial and spatial, a push-pull between restlessness and expansiveness, the immediate and the infinite, the body and the mind. And in a sense, this is exactly what Morell’s paintings capture: a sensation, rather than a specific object, place or story. They are both records of the artistic process and an invitation to experience or feel rather than interpret the image.