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‘Burroughs in Tangier’ (2005) has captivated me ever since its display in the 2010 Turner Prize Exhibition The work is composed largely of art historical references; allusions to an interior scene of a hotel room [which, as the title suggests, might be the room in which the American novelist William S Burroughs worked on the Interzone collection] inscribed with Twombly-esque wax crayon scribbles The brushstrokes are vaguely reminiscent of some post-painterly abstraction The linens recall Henri Rousseau’s primitivist floral structures, and, outside the window, one encounters the bright shade of blue Matisse used to depict the lightness found nowhere more than on the Côte d’Azur Traces of what it means to spend a life as an exiled writer in the interzone of Tangier occupy every corner of the painting Burroughs’ typewriter, or a poor reproduction of Botticelli’s ‘Venus’ decorating the hotel room, point to the anonymity of hotel rooms heightened by the way in which one encounters things that don’t belong Yet what mesmerised me about this painting was not its subject, but the way in which the individual elements were composed into something entirely new I have never seen a painting that so loudly screams: ‘I have a composition Everything else is irrelevant’ I was left with the feeling that there was something incomprehensibly singular about the painting, something I did not understand at all I decided to visit Dexter Dalwood in his studio to find out more about the process behind this painterly experience If I was at all apprehensive it was because of my reluctance to demystify such an experience with the knowledge of its production Speaking with artists sometimes bears the danger of disillusionment; if I understand the painting better, will its affect suffer?   Luckily this was not the case I did not learn much about ‘Burroughs in Tangiers’, but our discussion circled around various works in Dalwood’s studio due to be shipped out for his solo exhibition at the Centre PasquArt in Biel However, discussing Dalwood’s more recent work illuminated his practice as a whole, helping me to figure ‘Burroughs in Tangier’ into a much