Jonathan Syme: As A Rooted Spectre

Royale Projects is pleased to announce As a Rooted Spectre Jonathan Syme’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, CA opening May 17, 2025 from 5 -7pm, and running through July 31, 2025.

“​​Here, the spectre is not drifting or lost; it is anchored, folded deep into the surface like roots gripping soil reaching through time, weaving unseen threads between matter and spirit. Every mark holds energy; every surface carries the pulse of something alive, intertwined, enduring” - Jonathan Syme 

Syme’s compositions—at once grounding and transcendent—unfold through dense accumulations of pigment. Undulating impasto gestures are layered over fields of staining, scraping, and erasure, producing surfaces that vibrate with a dynamic tension between precision and spontaneity. Obscure communes of vibrant color intersect, disrupt, and collide—at times within a single brushstroke. The result is a visual dialect that feels both intuitive and constructed, as if the work is perpetually on the edge of forming and unraveling itself.

Integral to Symes’ practice is his consideration of the frame, not merely as a vessel for presentation but as an essential sculptural component of the work itself. Each molding is meticulously hand-built and painted, often in unexpected hues, to explore the dualities of expansion and confinement, actively contending with the kinetic energy held within.

Syme challenges the conventions of painting, absorbing historical references and transforming them into something urgent. His works are infused with the biomorphic spirituality of Vasily Kandinsky and the gestural complexity of Willem de Kooning, while resonating with the chromatic intensity and restless mark-making of contemporary painters such as Katharina Grosse and Cecily Brown. The result is a practice that feels anchored in tradition yet defiantly present.

His nuanced color harmonies paired with tactile applications evoke a cosmic sense of interconnectedness, reminiscent of cellular proliferation, organic growth, geological strata or celestial rhythms. Reflecting the unity of nature, Syme’s abstractions allude to a delicate balance between micro and macro, reminding that all things are part of a shared, living universe.