Neon Parc

At the heart of this exhibition lies a fascination with the idea of the mirage—the illusory and unattainable. Through an oversized magic wand, a trick retractable knife cast in bronze and steel, and a sterling silver rocket rolled into a joint, Sylvester conjures the visual language of enchantment—objects designed to channel power, invoke awe, or offer escape. Yet these works mislead as much as they promise. Like stage props in a magician’s act, they hint at revelation but remain inert, ungraspable. Transformation here is never guaranteed—it’s a trick of the light, a gesture of mis-direction, where desire is real, but the magic is always out of reach.

In his new photographs, Sylvester riffs on the imagery of perfume campaigns—where enticing vessels and sensuous vapours sell an idea of self-altering fantasy through glossy seduction. His subjects are often fixed in a stillness that suggests detachment, ennui, or longing—emotional undercurrents disguised beneath immaculate surfaces. In ‘Spilt Potion’ (2025), a woman straddles an oversized perfume bottle, caught mid-transmutation in a neon-lit set that feels part sci-fi, part stage dream. She is powerful and poised, occupying a synthetic world built from branding, beauty, and corporate aesthetics.

Meanwhile, ‘Party up on Skull Rock’ (2025) depicts a surreal moment of euphoric, yet ghostly abandon as dissected figures dance atop a massive, cracked skull, headlights blazing from hollow eyes, conjuring a final bacchanal—a rave-at-the-end-of-the-world. It’s an image of exuberant nihilism, joy against oblivion. Like the oversized magic wand, it’s not about the spell but the longing behind it: to break through, to feel changed, to feel anything at all.

Sylvester’s new paintings, ‘Turbo Maxx’ and ‘Maxx Drive’ (2025), painted with the iconography of lightspeed—a sci-fi technology that allows instantaneous travel through time and space—bridge these scenes and objects together. Here, speed becomes metaphor: the rush of emotion, the flash of fantasy, the dopamine hit of instant gratification.
Darren Sylvester’s new exhibition constructs a theatre of yearning, where every object is a promise half-kept and every image a mirror of our own elusive desires. Here the viewer is caught between spectacle and sincerity, as these new works trace a contemporary mythology of transformation—one not of transcendence, but of flickering attempts, false starts, and fleeting illusions. It is a world of artificial light and simulated sincerity that shines just for you, but only if you believe it’s real.