[December 10 2021]
A figure lies back, their hand behind their head, head turned to the side like they’re trying to see you, their neck cranked. Long legs lanky, and then big feet, sprawling toward the viewer, in a colour field haze that has the momentum of distorted perspective Wall is so known for. The feet coming at you, right there, toes that fit in your mouth. “There are definitely fetishistic elements to my work. It’s an aesthetic I really love that speaks to the limits of intimacy,” Amanda Wall affirms. The smoothness of the skin, hands, feet, gives almost a rubbery quality, but not the uncanny flesh of realistic sex robots. This is a living, breathing person. You can tell. Wall’s paintings have a wet quality that is somewhere in the field of gloss. The sheen in her work has depth. This is the point. There is that sheen depth in the portrait of a figure’s face. There is that sheen depth in the quality of how Wall paints the backgrounds, colour fields these characters float in. In another painting, the long-legged figure is sprawling once more, now in an inflatable. Red and pink, a toy that is neither a donut or a flamingo. On one side of the painting is a chiaroscuro effect, the shadows giving more of a sense of three dimensional space, the figure quite realistic; on the other side, less contrast, and more like a painting. Wall explores this sense of split worlds, like time or space is bifurcating, and all that is there to witness it is a head with a bow, staring at you with that one, penetrating eye, and a body crouching down. A hand with that depth sheen, nails painted in a matured sea-foam, holds a water glass. The water glass is realistic, almost hyper-realistic. But it is holding a red tulip far too big for that cup. A red tulip that droops down like a giant cherry on a flaccid black stem, blood red, hung there in a colour field of fern mint green. The real gives way to something unreal. Something that is fictitious, imagined, next to something I think I might have seen. There is space here for both. And you never know exactly where you’re standing.
Words by Lauren Fournier
On view now until January 15 2022 at Almine Tech, 20 Rue de l’Abbaye, Brussels
Photos by Shevi Shenaj
“Salon de Peinture” a painting exhibition at Almine Rech, New York
“Trois Rivieres,” an exhibition by Alexandre Lenoir at Almine Rech, New York
“BLACK RODEO: Cowboys of the 21st Century,” an exhibition by Otis Kwame...
Taryn Simon “Paperwork and the Will of Capital” exhibition at Almine Rech...
“Living Image,” an exhibition by Jonathan Gardner at Almine Rech, Paris
John M. Armleder solo exhibition opening at Almine Rech Gallery, New York
debeaulieu/pierre banchereau
harold ancart
Lisa Yuskavage
Hawkesworth Jamie
Tomoo Gokita “PEEKABOO” exhibition opening and after party at Tokyo Opera City...
Slutever
Sex Fashion
Balenciaga
Nigora in Los Angeles
See Yasmine Eslami’s new S/S 2018 swimwear campaign
BIRKENSTOCK BOX x Rick Owens Launch Party at Rick Owens, Los Angeles
Sofie in the Dutch fields
Michael Hemy in Ishigaki, Japan
“Aldo Fallai for Giorgio Armani, 1977 – 2021” curated by Giorgio Armani,...
“Told A Vision” a film by Chloe Wise
William Eggleston
“Revolution 9” an exhibition by Homma Takashi at the Tokyo Photographic Art...
Juergen Teller “The Myth” opened on November 30th 2023 at Suzanne Tarasieve...
A–COMPANY PREFALL 2024 COLLECTION PRESENTED IN A STAGING OF ANTIGONE BY Daphné...
Givenchy X MyTheresa dinner at Theatre des Variétés
L’Épingle à cheveux by Suzanne Syz X David Mallett.
© Purple Institute