Juliette Blightman

At the entrance to this exhibition, a sheet of text by Juliette Blightman elides the wintry dullness of institutional overtures and promptly slips a viewer into her intimate space. It is a territory she rarely abandons, and one to which few other contemporary artists lay claim with the same fresh simplicity and uninhibited sincerity. The title of the show, “Extimacy,” evokes an outward orientation that does not ultimately characterize the works included. This presentation explores a tension between presence and absence—or, perhaps, the multiple ways of being present.

Two big paintings, Exclusivity (no. 3), 2015, and Come inside, bitte, 2015, are hung asymmetrically in the main rotunda, eschewing conventional display. In the next room, a diary of graphite drawings mostly belonging to a loose series titled “Day” and ranging between 2015 and 2016 presents introspective, quotidian imagery. In one entry, a penis hangs between a strainer and a beater in some Ikea gadget. This and other works in the group suggest that the body is intimately connected with the domestic. The pictures are recurrent impressions as well; the aforementioned image reappears in the clumsily rendered little painting Day 329, 2016.

An installation of massive paintings titled “Still Life,” 2016, reveals a towering architecture of sexual imagery. Set up in a semicircular frieze, they are cinematic, bringing to mind Blightman’s longtime fascination with moving images, which are mostly absent from this show with the exception of one text-based video, Day 51, 2015, which expands her surreal motifs in time. It is a melancholy piece that keenly seeks an understanding of social interaction, in a world where physicality and evanescence are no longer distinguishable.