I know when it’s time to eat my words and admit that, perhaps, I was wrong. A few years ago, I proclaimed (often) that I hated portraiture. In my defense, this was a period of overabundance, when Chloe Wise reigned supreme, and I was sick of seeing beautiful, posed people painted unremarkably in every gallery I entered. But it’s 2025 now, I’m older, a bit wiser, and I’ve seen Tim Presley at SADE.
The figures in Presley’s portraits are beautiful like those in an Egon Schiele work are; elegant, but decidedly uncanny. The subjects are borderline sickly with their sharp angles, elongated necks, and dimensionless faces—a clear nod to Expressionism. Actual expressions are largely absent, but where the tugged corners of mouths are missing, Presley has haphazardly placed brushstrokes that imbue their flat faces with movement.
There’s a near brutal, yet delicate somberness underscoring the works, derived from the languid faces and pared-down palette Presley employs. Even the nudes, where the bodies are softer in structure, have a hardened weariness to them as if made not out of desire but a primal impulse. The melancholia is disrupted by the sporadic Adidas and Nike insignias, which take one out of the otherwise timeless works, and the Xanax® logo in Lavender (2024) is humorous, but its inclusion feels out of place. The swords, however, are right where they belong, cutting through the frames with a stoicism that rivals the cold faces.
