Art: John Currin at Sadie Coles

This is a small but perfectly formed exhibition of the most recent work by the famed American artist, John Currin. The paintings, a series of female portraits, mostly nudes, are clearly painted from life – (the portrait of Currin’s wife artist Rachel Feinstein sleeping, Rachel Asleep, captures Feinstein’s unusual and wonderful face with astonishing likeness) - and yet are also deliberately from the realm of fantasy: namely the fantastical way women’s bodies have been portrayed in both art and pornography through the centuries and decades. Currin has rendered his sitters’ skin milky white and flawless, draped their flesh with strands of pearls and swathes of sumptuous silk, and shown their smiles as alluring but enigmatic, so reminding the viewer of the idealised way women have been painted since the Renaissance. At the same time, many of their poses have come straight from the centre folds of middle-of-the-road porn mags. So you look at these paintings with all kinds of weird recognition – and yet they seem totally fresh and new and modern. It’s clever stuff: the paintings are complex, interesting and beautiful (and sometimes creepy – make sure you see Lake Place, a modern day version of Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe), and Currin’s technique with a brush is nothing short of masterful. We’re so glad to have seen this work and if you go – really, do go, this is an artist painting with such power - we know you will be too.