Celia Hempton
Galerie Sultana
Known for making up-close and personal paintings of faces and genitalia belonging to (mostly male) live-streamers and life models, Celia Hempton has long been interested in what intimacy looks like in our increasingly hybrid virtual/IRL world. Notably, when painting her most recent small-format works, the artist kept her gaze entirely online. Of the eleven oils on view at Sultana, five are from the series “Chatrandom,” 2013– , and depict men Hempton encountered on the video chat site after which the series is named. Accomplished during the real time of each chat, these portraits have an immediacy