Swiss artist Andreas Ruthi will exhibit a new body of work at Duckett & Jeffreys in a coup for the fledgling contemporary art gallery in Old Maltongate, Malton.

“Following our very successful opening in March, we want to continue to raise the bar by showing brave, refreshingly new, exciting and innovative art,” says gallery owner Ian Mitchell. “Andreas exhibits mainly in Germany, Switzerland and Australia, which makes our show a unique opportunity to see his work in Yorkshire.”

Born in Zurich, Andreas now lives and works in Wales and has exhibited alongside Damien Hirst, Glenn Brown and Angela Bulloch. His painting Diego’s Compact was nominated for the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize in 2004 and he has been selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries too, and his work is held in many public collections, not least the Arts Council.

His new show, Double Page Paintings, will expand on an earlier investigation of the relationship between high art and popular culture in a series of paintings, drawings and sculpture.

“The scale of the paintings makes the task of painting intimate, like reading a book,” says Andreas.

“This way of working is also a reaction against the masculine, large-scale paintings and studio culture... the assumption that bigger is better.”

To mark the exhibition, Duckett and Jeffreys has produced a publication for sale that documents Double Page Painting pictorially, complemented by an interview by contemporary art curator Stuart Cameron and an essay by artist Chris Brown.

“We feel very privileged to be showing Andreas’s new work, which suits perfectly the intimate spaces here,” says co-owner Stef Mitchell.

“With this show we aim to show that small can have immense strength and compact can be compelling.”

Work from the Duckett and Jeffreys art collection will run alongside Double Page Painting in the DJ Selections show of illustrations from Switzerland, France, Canada, America and Britain from Thursday to June 5.

• Opening hours are 10am to 6pm, Wednesday to Saturday; other times by appointment on 01377 236008.