
Luke Thurgate Australia, b. 1978
Love Story (back to front), 2024
oil on board in hinged frame
13 3/8 x 8 5/8 in
34 x 22 cm
34 x 22 cm
These new works play with modes of representation; they are objects, turned into paintings, turned back into objects. The hinged frames allude to the architectural spaces we might encounter this...
These new works play with modes of representation; they are objects, turned into paintings, turned back into objects. The hinged frames allude to the architectural spaces we might encounter this type of iconography or the convention of the multi panelled marriage portrait. The paintings are imbued with a queer subjectivity. They depict fragments of the male body based on classical sculpture, but the sensuality of the imagery is in part arrested by its own artifice. They are coded with desire, intimate in scale and lovingly rendered, but they also remain a contrivance, an idealised fantasy set against candy coloured backgrounds. These are love stories that are all surface, gay in-jokes about sexual roles and the proliferation of headless idealised physiques. Despite the visual pun that the works imply an erotic encounter as they close in on themselves, they remain static and impenetrable, revelling in the space where distance makes the longing that much sweeter.