CHLOE WISE

These paintings are maniacally neutral, excitedly stagnant, electric beige, realistically fake – Band-Aid-colored moments of fake laughter, smiles fraught with multiple intentions, oxymorons, hypocrisy. They reflect the way we are meant to behave, carry on, continue in a world that could easily, if thought about too deeply, drive us all to insanity.

Attempting to keep it together, to act transgressively normal, exceedingly acceptable, outrageously okay – these are the impossibilities required of us while we are constantly told ‘anything is possible’, where we are meant to accept, stay positive and support institutions repeatedly letting us down.

We are unable to escape, and so we must choose the palliative route, the Band-Aid. We must smile into the camera while our fingerprints are being taken, while enjoying the intimate privacy of our borrowed homes. We must revel in our detachment from everything, and the luxury of looking away in privacy (which we convince ourselves we have). Everything we do is a little treat, a little freedom within a system we are never free within. These paintings intend not to portray the underlying chaos and injustice that pervades our existence, but rather the nice and normal moments, tense as they may be, that sit on the surface – the Band-Aid atop the unspeakable wound of our collective body.

— Chloe Wise

Press release courtesy Almine Rech