Adrian Dobre Tyne and Wear, United Kingdom
I am a self-taught painter based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Working primarily with acrylic on canvas, my practice combines deconstructed figuration and gestural abstraction to explore contemporary socio-political themes, historical painting, and wider theoretical and philosophical questions.
My paintings emerge through a multi-layered process of paint application and intentional erosion. Accumulated layers are repeatedly disrupted, allowing the surface to operate as a site of excavation where concealed dimensions and underlying structures become visible. Recurring squares, grids, and scratched marks create screen-like motifs that are progressively disrupted, questioning the conditions of display itself. The work oscillates between solidity and fragmentation.
Through processes of abrasion and material degradation, the paintings function as tools for navigating, exploring, investigating, and reflecting on contemporary social realities shaped by migration, identity, nationalism, social structures, and public and private realms.
A mechanism of excavation into the social milieu.
At this stage, my practice engages with the analysis of the ideas, values, or rules active in the social routine, addressing the need for sustained critical attention to what is revealed, what is obscured, and what persists beneath imposed images or unexamined assumptions.
My work proposes Scratching The Surface as both methodological and perceptual inquiry, grounded in sustained curiosity and observation.
Artwork
Untitled , 2026
Crumbling giant, 2026
Missed passenger, 2026
In-between lens, 2026
Latent evidence, 2026
Untitled, 2026
Untitled, 2023
We , 2024
Regional symbol, 2024
Circular , 2025
Social unbirth, 2024
Digging alone with butterflies, 2025
Untitled, 2023