Fredericks & Freiser is happy to announce the primary New York solo exhibition of recent work by Amélie Peace (b.1997, Cannes. Lives and works in London). A brand new aesthetic of care involves life in Peace’s work, because the works navigate fashionable relationships and questions of what we owe to and might settle for from each other. In her whirlwind work, figures seem in narrative scenes of entangled our bodies that elevate, caress, cling to, or weigh upon one another. Every interplay seems as if out of a dream or a reminiscence wherein the figures have simply come into a brand new approach of present of their our bodies, each collectively and individually. These “intimacy-landscapes” function nearly indexical maps tracing human connection and sexuality. Shadows of the contact of a hand stay imprinted on one other’s physique. Situations of heat tenderness are tempered by cool detachment. The precise nature of any particular scene stays open for the viewer’s creativeness to interpret alongside the figures. As a gaggle, the works categorical a conviction within the lasting impressions of bodily contact and emotional entanglement.
Peace is on the vanguard of latest painters considering by way of the ways in which our society fosters a desperation for unity with others however on the identical time, an actual need for particular person separation. Her figures confront this pressure, concurrently attracting and repelling each other. The technical ability of her compositions underlies this push-and-pull. Elements of the composition stays blurry, however key particulars come into crystal focus. Faces and arms typically emerge into this highlight. The general impact is one among viewing these topics beneath the prying gaze of a magnifying glass. The ripples of this magnifying glass typically interrupt the scene, leading to our bodies stuttering throughout the canvas in a number of iterations that contribute to a way that point itself is changing into warped.
Rigorous composition and dreamlike realism distinguish Peace’s work as a transhistorical contemplation of human connection. On this pursuit, her œuvre attracts from historic precedents comparable to Käthe Kollwitz’s delicate representations of ladies caught in moments of introspection. In lots of Peace’s intimate work, a gaze is directed out of the canvas and towards the viewer in an age-old invitation to take part within the relationality between the figures represented. Via their gazes, her topics ask the viewer to ponder their very own participation. This strategy explores queerness and womanhood in a refined and nuanced fashion. Every grouping explores advanced emotional undercurrents, typically impressed by queer poetry such because the work of Italian author Patrizia Cavalli. A number of psychological realities exist without delay in these expansive representations. Coloration performs a big half in activating the psychological facet of the figures. Pops of orange or crimson name consideration to situations the place our bodies cut up and double. Darkness creeps in too, throwing a topic’s face into aid or casting an uncanny feeling. The colour palette typically softens into sensual richness: brushstrokes swirl across the figures in a visible aura of respite and delight, rigorously putting them in their very own insulated world. In these gently fracturing compositions, Peace provides us a second faraway from the movement of time: a privileged glimpse into the psyches of her inscrutable figures who provide vulnerability and resilience without delay.