Posted on
2021-12-06
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.
Opposite – Blow up heart, 2021
Exhibition runs through to January 15th, 2022
Almine Rech
20 rue de l’Abbaye
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium
www.alminerech.com
