Suckers: Endre Aalrust
Gallery Gudmundsdottir is pleased to present Suckers, the first solo exhibition by Endre Aalrust with Gallery Gudmundsdottir.
A baby’s pacifier rests on a tabletop. Its soft nub points upward, inviting a suck. Behind it, stands a Greek tavern pitcher filled with several narcissus flowers, one of which is drooping and losing its petals. The flower stems suck up water from the jug, although the wilted narcissus no longer seems to be drinking. These objects are not the only suckers in Endre Aalrust’s show of new paintings. Here, a bevy of of them abound in different forms. In “Single Mum” a mother dog is suckling her puppies. A young man in profile holds a metal mate cup with a straw. Farther afield, a man cruises in a park at night. He seems to be taking a leak, or looking at his phone, maybe arranging a hook-up. Perhaps his date has been a no-show and he’s looking for some new fun, though he might do better to move out from under a bright lamppost. Public exposure? Connecting him to a painting of a rooster riding on a horse’s back, associations with erotic jokes become inescapable. Yet a painting of a lonesome building with a rooftop sign advertising “Erotik” is backward, seen from behind. The clear suggestion is that the sexiness to be found inside is anything but titillating.
Aalrust paints all these scenes with exuberance. Lucious brushstrokes and colors fill these images of disparate suckers, lending tenderness to scenes not only of cute animals like nursing puppies, but also to the more lonesome and isolated protagonists. These single men roam canvases full of the artist’s delight in the medium of painting looking for queer love, connections, sustenance, or erotic pleasure. Their loneliness is counterbalanced by the obvious pleasure the artist himself has found in painting them. If they seem somehow sad, we should not pity them, because the artist is happily with them, rendering their vulnerable forms on a humble and emotionally accessible scale. Their vulnerability becomes something the painter shares with us like a gift to discover and even empathize with. One might cringe at the flat-footed comical nature of these images that carry the deadweight of a one liner. But the softness and delight in the way that they are painted beg us to give them – and painting – a second chance.
Pacifiers have an ancient pedigree. Humans have long stuck things in babies’ mouths, hoping to still their crying by offering them an oral surrogate. Ancient terracotta animals for this function still survive, as do teething toys made of coral. Sometimes pacifiers were simply lumps of fabric dipped in alcohol. Many parents still worry: will pacifying a baby ultimately lead to unwanted oral fixations? Or maybe even more sinister predilections and orthodontic bills. Aalrust has evidently developed his own debilitating predilection: a desire to paint even if critics of the medium have repeatedly declared it to be outmoded, or embarrassing if not outright “dead” (like a narcissus whose bloom has faded). And he has found a cast of characters with whom he can pacify this maudlin pursuit, transforming flat puns and off-center jokes with their help into jewel-like canvases. But in bringing us into their atomized and frequently alienated worlds, one cannot help but wonder, are we the ones being pacified?
Text: Sasha Rossman
