Sympathies
SYMPATHIES
2021 – present
Evolving from the domestic interiors featured in previous paintings, this series extends the concept of vacancy into cognitive realms, asking who the disembodied inhabitant of digital show homes might be, and what they might yearn for. With a futuro-minimalist take on synthetic realism and a nod to 17th-century vanitas still life, these paintings work with contrasting symbols of wealth and decay to inform semi-fictional spaces that invite the viewer to ruminate on desire, anxiety, and the transience of life. Taking sympathy as an organizing principle, they become an absurdist game of proximity that sets up parameters within which to explore our sense of perception. Windows, mirrors, doorways, and the one-to-one scale of still-life elements pull us in, while frosted glass, darkened backgrounds, awkwardly tight framing, and flattened exteriors push us back out again. This fluctuating state of immersion and separation is made uncannier still by the careful placement of relatable but mismatched household items that seem to indicate an alien attempt at staging human habitat. It is as though these spaces exist to serve an eerie and not entirely human embodiment of capitalism, where the body, sanitized beyond existence, seeks itself through sympathetic relationships between objects and their surroundings.
Adapted from the exhibition text written by Alex Bowron for Sympathies at Galerie Nicolas Robert, May 12 – June 11 2022
