Maybe what this is all about is a disguised account of Will Sheldon’s interiority. But it has been complexified with separate narratorial stages, with a disorienting overlapping of views and representations that undermines the procedure of recognition or identification proper to the autobiographical looking at.
Body pieces are detached here—which is normally characteristic of reports, in the like of Eugene Delacroix’—but so are affections cynicism has been added into it all. There is a little something also akin to Pierre Klossowski’s get on the simulacrum. There is no distinction involving actuality and its depiction any longer.
The ambivalence, built of attraction and repulsion that is so typical of Sheldon’s work, cleaves the subjects: characters are consequently “divided” (or detached?)—between a quantity of sentiments that their environments send out back to them, to us. We’re witnessing a forgery a forgery of identification/ies by signifies of a fanatical repetition of modicums. As a result of their prismatic selves, we can only accessibility a blurred vision of the painter’s essence.
Having said that, even if every thing is detached, almost everything coheres in an intimism a la Edouard Vuillard or Pierre Bonnard. Some domestic scenes and familiar faces can be discerned in these works. The depiction of light-weight, the use of color, and the apprehension of point of view are also in similitude with the kinds of the movement.
Will Sheldon is displaying us the clandestine, the confidential entry, the escape hatch, perhaps even the important to knowledge his work. This mix of mediums (paintings and drawings, oils and crayons) this combine of tactics (departing from the airbrush to probe the classical paintbrush) this combine of issue matters he has been obsessing above to this day (from the BJDs and the portraits, to the architectural factors) this smart endeavor to make a portray of his drawings these diverse chronicles anything, he is covertly and reservedly seeking to demonstrate us all the things, all of the private and personal. This is a potlach1, he detached a piece of himself, what a stunning offering!
at Heidi, Berlin
until April 15, 2023