Charlie Stein: Light Under Pressure

 

Two figures in puffer jackets – one pale pink, the other black –  grip onto each other in what could be a loving embrace, an act of desperation or a fierce struggle. This sense of disorientation and unease is typical of Charlie Stein’s paintings. Her Surrealist compositions cast us into a world that is at once familiar and totally alien. Light under pressure, her solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, brings together a striking new body of work that explores power and absence, the ways in which we strive for meaning as means of hope and self-preservation.

 

While many of the works in this show can be seen as figurative, Stein’s approach to portraiture is not to depict the individual, but rather the absence of individuality. She explores how the digital world allows us to manipulate images of ourselves, others, and the world to the point where our perception of reality—of how and where we exist—becomes irrevocably altered. In this context, her shiny surfaces and padded forms serve as both disguises and expressions of disconnection. In Virtually Yours (Perfect Lovers), a direct reference to Magritte’s The Lovers, we glimpse what might be flesh and the shape of an embrace, but we cannot be certain of what lies beneath the surface—are these bodies, something more monstrous, or simply air? In Virtually Yours (Absent Touch), the body, if we believe it to be present, becomes further abstracted, reduced to two padded ‘appendages’ hanging limply in space The titling of these works captures the sense of longing that we might experience when encountering them: virtually being a word that is used to describe an online space or action as well as to indicate that something is nearly but not quite true.

 

Other works, particularly in the Thesmophoria series (named after an ancient Greek fertility festival), address the unrealistic expectations placed on women to look or behave in a certain way. In these paintings, figures are depicted in various stages of being injected. These works speak to the pressure placed on women to fulfill impossible standards of beauty – forever smoother, perkier, younger – but also to processes of artificial insemination, which, as Stein notes from personal experience, can be both empowering for women and isolating. The rubbery, reflective surface of the black latex suits her figures wear taps into the over-sexualisation and commodification of women (they are literally wrapped in plastic), but also serves as a kind of armour, a form of self-preservation.

 

‘In physics the concept of ‘black body radiation’ describes how a “black body” (an idealised object that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation that hits it) emits thermal radiation,’ explains Stein. ‘Even in a vacuum—where matter is absent—an object can still radiate energy in the form of light and heat due to its temperature. This radiation is faint but persistent and exists even in extreme conditions.’ In her paintings then, the idealised object – the female figure – becomes a symbol of hope and creativity, of an energy that persists despite the hostile environment that surrounds it. This is the light that exists under pressure.

 

We perhaps see this idea most clearly in the Parthenogenesis paintings which depict sculptural forms against draped backdrops, recalling historical depictions of the model in the artist’s studio. Yet, it also speaks to how Stein creates a feeling of intimacy in works devoid of bodies, such as Soft Portrait and Stack (Tenderness). Alongside the ‘figurative’ paintings, there is something vaguely apocalyptic and pathetic about the piles of inflated forms in these works, but they are arguably the most affecting. Is it because they convey a sense of release and hope—of letting go and rebuilding again? Or is it simply the appeal of a soft place, somewhere to hide, something to cushion a fall?