The artists, gimps, aristocrats, lovers, and anonymous individuals found in this selection of Jelena Telecki paintings, crafted with a masterful manoeuvring of oils, stretch across the past decade of production. Connected by an overarching atmosphere, though in some cases years apart, the feeling each work possesses is a constant. Exploring a kind of absurdity fused with both the personal and political, the cinematic greys and sepia tones associated with the Eastern Bloc — Telecki’s place of birth — run throughout each painting. But Telecki’s works seem to sit closer to the stage than film, between Beckett and Ionesco’s individual takes on the Theatre of the Absurd and Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty; themes of black humour, abstraction, and extremity are played out in differing acts or scenes as part of a larger play whose duration continues to extend.

Presenting this cross-section of recent works shows the constant contained within Telecki’s larger play — the aforementioned feeling, with the individual narratives of each act (painting) highlighting key points of reference or concern for the artist: from a pleasurable release, overthinking, or feeling a state of unease, to being a poor party guest. These figures play their roles in an unassuming way, not overly apparent, yet richly gesturing to something more holistic and grand.