There is something uncomfortable in Elsa Rouy’s paintings; even for some time, her Instagram bio read “disgusting and bad art” — although she’s now changed it to “Metaphysical surgeon.” Still, her work draws you in like a horror movie makes you watch the most gruesome, bloody scenes; you find an enjoyable yet taboo pleasure in it. If you want to feel that contradictory push-and-pull, you should head to Berlin’s GNYP Gallery, which is hosting the painter’s solo show, I Pictured Skin, until the 26th of April.
The title already gives away the main focus of this new series of works: skin. Just thinking about it, some unsettling images and films come to mind — from Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In (2011) to the most recent The Substance (2024), to others like Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016) or Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986). In an age where ‘skinfluencers’ are all the rage and people are happily engaging in twelve-step routines before going to bed, we’re more aware than ever of the skin we live in. Elsa Rouy, like any good artist, is able to capture those concerns — but not as you may think.
As curator Emily Steer writes in the exhibition text, in the artist’s paintings “the skin is rendered viscerally in thick paint. Sometimes it seems waxy and stretched, as though her figures are wrapped in plastic packaging or hovering somewhere between living, breathing human and inanimate doll; in other works, it is broken and bruised, slashed through with thin streaks of paint, bubbling up from layers underneath, or flushed from burst capillaries under the surface.”
But it isn’t only about texture; colours influence too. In her new series, Rouy paints the characters in ill-looking hues — an undefined tone between grey and green, with splashes of peachy orange and pink. The poses don’t help either: an open-legged woman feels strangely uncomfortable, while a group of naked people seem a film still from a horror movie; they aren’t dancing like in Henri Matisse’s Dance nor engaging in sexual activity; they’re sort of paralysed but also trying to escape. Another close-up of a torso shows someone scratching their back — and the painting truly looks like they have a rash.
That’s something Rouy is great at: creating this discomfort on the viewer but also spark their imagination to question what they’re looking at. Are these characters in pain? In fear? Are they as uncomfortable as we are? Are they even aware that they look so odd? Slowly building an incredibly personal universe, the painter is carving a space for herself in the art scene. So don’t miss her next steps.
The exhibition I Pictured Skin by Elsa Rouy is on view until the 26th of April at GNYP Gallery, Knesebeckstraße 96, Berlin, Germany.
