Oscar Chloe Directory Dismantles the Gallery Formula with Debut Exhibition, ‘Muscle Memory’.

The date is set, Oscar Chloe Directory (OCD Gallery, @oscarchloedirectory on Instagram), a nomadic space redefining what a gallery can be, is about to enter London’s art scene. Founded by art historians and curators Oscar Sunderland and Chloe Stewart, OCD Gallery makes its debut this September with a distinct curatorial vision that dismantles inherited formulas and reimagines the role of art within the shifting currents of contemporary culture. 

Their rigorous and rebellious ethos anchors OCD firmly within the wider ecology of contemporary art while pushing against its most entrenched conventions.  The gallery is committed to championing practices that resist easy categorisation, artists who unsettle form, fracture tradition, working in the in-between spaces where art comes most alive. In place of institutional mimicry, OCD pursues risk and dialogue, carving out a space where experimentation and scholarship converge. To reimagine how contemporary art might take shape in years to come. 

For its inaugural exhibition, OCD has partnered with PovosGallery to present Muscle Memory, a solo show by Leopoldo Goût. Returning to London after his early studies at Central Saint Martins, Goût unveils a new body of large-scale, monochrome figure paintings created across his studios in New York, Oaxaca, and Mexico City. The artist refines the body to its most elemental structures: line, stance, and tension. These are impressions of anatomical study infused with the urgency of expressive mark-making, fleeting traces of movement, echoes of gestures that linger long after their moment has passed. Each canvas suggests a choreography of actions performed, inherited or suppressed, portraying memory as sensation. Goût’s figures seem suspended in a threshold state, caught between activity and repose, presence and disappearance.

“Goût’s practice embodies a freedom of gesture and form that resists containment”, comments OCD co-founder Oscar Sunderland. “To inaugurate the gallery with work underscores our commitment to presenting art that unsettles fixed categories and insists on its own independence.”

As OCD steps into the art world, it does so with conviction and curiosity. Rather than following precedent, Sunderland and Stewart are intent on defining what comes next. For London, the arrival of Oscar Chloe Directory signals more than a new exhibition; it establishes a new way of imagining the gallery itself.

The exhibition opens privately by appointment in Notting Hill on September 18th, running until October 10th, before reemerging as a public pop-up during Frieze Week (October 13th-19th) at 56 Greek Street, Soho. 

To book an appointment, contact: info@oscarchloedirectory.com