Sarah Slappey: ‘Bloodline’ at Bernheim review

Where there’s pleasure, there’s shame; at least there is in American artist Sarah Slappey’s work. She paints female bodies naked and writhing, reclining in baths, legs and arms intertwined. At first it’s plainly, obviously erotic. But then you notice little cuts and dribbles of blood, a body has been twisted too far, chains are wrapped around limbs, metal rods pierce hands and thighs. Is this an orgy or a crime scene?

Maybe the two aren’t so different. Slappey paints some bodies like they’re carved from marble, implying that some sculptor made them this way, wanted them to be all exposed and vulnerable like this. It’s the erotic as a spectacle, femininity as something constructed, something built to constrict women.

Slappey violently smudges the line between erotic and violent, appreciation and exploitation, sensuality and death. Her figures could be beautiful lovers writhing in ecstasy, or they could be dead bodies dumped in a bath. The same visual elements repeat throughout: gold hooped earrings, silver chains, rebar, plug holes and water just about to whoosh out of the bath. It’s a vortex of symbols, art historical allusions and terror.

And damn, Slappey can paint. This is precise, expert stuff – super-real, super-sumptuous.

Her figures are hyper-exaggerated, hyper-sexualised. These female bodies are twisted, distended, manipulated to accentuate their curves, their sexuality.

The end result is horribly uncomfortable, almost shameful, like she’s punishing you for liking the bodies she’s painted. It’s a hugely erotic, nasty, tense, beautiful ‘fuck you’.