In Danica Lundy's painting Pour (2024), viewers find themselves peering out at a disjointed world from within their own mouths. We look out over our meatless rib cage at knobbly knees in tight shorts. Our teeth loom before us, the upper row suspended high above the lower, appearing huge beside female athletes on a grassy field. We take a drink of water, which comes straight at us, cascading down our transparent throat.
One might wonder: why adopt such a grotesque perspective for a portrait? Is it to challenge our conventional understanding of reality and perception? Or perhaps to get us thinking about the relationship between our inner selves and the external world?
The Canadian artist conjures a hyperreal presence within her paintings by manipulating familiar shapes—distorting, inverting, and amplifying them.
Through the use of odd proportions, unusual perspectives, and the merging of forms, she creates uncanny visual portraits where we can see everything at once. Her work offers viewers a glimpse into worlds where reality bends in unexpected ways, allowing us to see from somewhere other than our own eyes.
Pour, along with a collection of other new paintings, is on view at White Cube Mason's Yard as part of Lundy's exhibition, Boombox, which is on view in London from 15 May to 29 June 2024.
