Maybe what that is all about is a disguised account of Will Sheldon’s interiority. But it surely has been complexified with separate narratorial ranges, with a disorienting overlapping of views and representations that undermines the method of recognition or identification correct to the autobiographical studying.

Physique elements are indifferent right here—which is normally attribute of research, within the like of Eugene Delacroix’—however so are affections; cynicism has been added into all of it. There’s something additionally akin to Pierre Klossowski’s tackle the simulacrum. There is no such thing as a distinction between actuality and its depiction anymore.

The ambivalence, product of attraction and repulsion that’s so typical of Sheldon’s work, cleaves the themes: characters are thus “divided” (or indifferent?)—between a amount of sentiments that their environments ship again to them, to us. We’re witnessing a forgery; a forgery of id/ies via a fanatical repetition of modicums. By their prismatic selves, we will solely entry a blurred imaginative and prescient of the painter’s essence.

Nevertheless, even when all the things is indifferent, all the things coheres in an intimism a la Edouard Vuillard or Pierre Bonnard. Some home scenes and acquainted faces may be discerned in these works. The depiction of sunshine, using shade, and the apprehension of perspective are additionally in similitude with those of the motion.

Will Sheldon is displaying us the clandestine, the confidential entry, the escape hatch, perhaps even the important thing to understanding his work. This mixture of mediums (work and drawings, oils and crayons); this mixture of strategies (departing from the airbrush to probe the classical paintbrush); this mixture of topic issues he has been obsessing over to today (from the BJDs and the portraits, to the architectural parts); this wise try to make a portray of his drawings; these totally different chronicles; all the things, he’s covertly and reservedly making an attempt to indicate us all the things, all the confidential and private. It is a potlach¹, he indifferent a chunk of himself, what an exquisite providing!

at Heidi, Berlin
till April 15, 2023