LONDON.- Stephen Friedman Gallery presents ‘Short Straw’, a body of new work by German painter, Cornelius Quabeck. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Quabeck combines process-led, intuitive painting with figurative compositions. His previous works have portrayed rock stars and fictional characters in energetic portraits that relay the artist’s painterly skill. In this vibrant new body of work Quabeck shifts the focus of his attention to the natural world, partly inspired by a recent residency in Marin County, California. Neither abstract nor wholly figurative in style, these works combine explosive tonal planes with fractured depictions of flora and fauna. Overlapping layers of paint bleed into one another and saturate the surface of the canvas. A kaleidoscopic fusion of colour