Aaron Kasmin: Playing with Fire
29/05/25 – 14/06/25
Returning to Sims Reed Gallery with even more vivacity and charm, Playing with Fire is the new solo show by British artist Aaron Kasmin. Open from 29th May – 14th June 2025, Playing with Fire marks the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with over 30 new diverse and colourful works.
Playing with Fire takes inspiration from the world of American matchbook advertisements, a visual language that Kasmin celebrates, to reflect the vibrancy and complexity of mid-20th century culture. While matchbooks were once small, transient objects, Kasmin’s dynamic works breathe new life into these forgotten pieces of advertising history, capturing themes of food, fashion, nightlife, and travel with an updated, contemporary twist.
Please email the gallery for a digital exhibition catalogue: gallery@simsreed.com
With a new twist for his new exhibition, for the first time Kasmin will be incorporating iconic London landmarks — including the Trocadero and the Beau Brummel statue in Piccadilly — into his compositions, weaving them into the narrative of his American-inspired imagery. The artist’s signature bold colours and striking compositions are now more complex and layered, with greater depth and more interaction between figures and scenes.
Kasmin’s myriad of nostalgic chalk pencil drawings are drawn from the artist’s own treasured vintage matchbook collection. Having acquired his first matchbook in 2012, Kasmin became an avid collector of Lion Match Company’s matchbooks and was inspired by their lively and inventive images that reflect the rise of America’s consumer culture, originally mass-produced for advertising purposes. In the early 1920s, the humble matchbook soon became the most effective advertising medium and embraced by almost every industry. Its broad range of subjects are colourfully reflected in this exhibition.
Each work tells a story—a moment frozen in time that draws on the exuberant glamour of the early to mid-20th century, evoking the golden era of Hollywood, the jazz age, and the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Aaron Kasmin comments, “Matchbooks are not just forgotten ephemera; they are visual stories of an era, capturing the birth of consumer culture and the excitement of advertising as art. With Playing with Fire, I want to shed new light on these miniature masterpieces and remind us of the power they once held.”
As one of London’s leading galleries specialising in original prints and works on paper, Sims Reed Gallery has led successful exhibitions of some of the finest modern, post-war and contemporary printmakers including Eileen Cooper, Allen Jones, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, Sol LeWitt, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin and Henry Moore amongst others.
Aaron Kasmin has become one of the gallery’s most successful and popular artists, and Playing with Fire promises to be yet another milestone in his celebrated career. Opening from 29th May – 14th June 2025, Playing with Fire will also be accompanied by an online viewing room.
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