THE AFTERTIME
London Art Fair –20th to 25th of January 2026
The Aftertime exists in a suspended realm as an interstice where memory loosens its grip on facts and imagination begins to recompose experience into something more elusive and resonant. It is not a chronological moment, but a psychic one: a duration that unfolds after the event, after certainty, when images continue to echo and transform within us.
The works presented inhabit this fragile territory. They do not illustrate reality; they remember it differently. Each painting and sculptural presence emerges as a fantasma—a ghostly form hovering between what has been lived and what has been dreamed. Faces appear withdrawn or contemplative, gazes directed inward or fixed upon something just beyond the frame, as if caught in the act of recalling a sensation rather than an image.
The exhibition opens with modern British master Gerald Leslie Brockhurst (1890–1978) and his late painting Victorine (1967), a work conceived entirely from memory. Painted in the final years of the artist’s life, the portrait recalls the image of his wife as a young woman—not as she once appeared, but as she endured in his inner vision. Rooted in the tradition of British realism, the work transcends documentation to become an act of emotional persistence. Past and present collapse into one another, inaugurating the conceptual space of the aftertime: a realm where remembrance reshapes reality.
From this intimate threshold, the exhibition moves toward a transfigured vision of the real in the paintings of Andrey Remnev (b. 1962). His works, aligned with contemporary Magical Realism, draw upon Renaissance composition and sacred iconography to construct symbolic, ritualized figures. In paintings such as Fireworks and Caldera (2019), the human body becomes an emblem rather than a portrait—an inhabitant of an imagined civilization suspended outside historical time. Here, the aftertime assumes the form of an archetypal memory, collective rather than personal.
This sense of temporal suspension reappears in the work of Jonathan Viner (b. 1969), whose contemporary narrative painting unfolds within psychologically charged interiors. In Essential Personnel (2024), thresholds, doors, and enclosed spaces function as mental landscapes rather than architectural ones. Viner’s scenes seem to occur just after, or just before, something unresolved, situating the viewer within the transitional dimension of the aftertime, where identity remains in flux.
A different register of transformation emerges in the work of Kukula (b. 1971). Drawing inspiration from Rococo aesthetics, Kukula reinterprets eighteenth-century grace, theatricality, and sensual ambiguity through a contemporary lens. In The Hunter (2024), gender becomes fluid, identity mutable. The figure inhabits a state of metamorphosis, dissolving rigid roles in favor of a liberated, imaginative space. Here, the aftertime is a site of freedom—where identity is continuously renegotiated.
Sculptural forms extend this liminal language in the ceramic works of Clémentine de Chabaneix (b. 1991). Her figures—Le garçon jardin, Esprit-fête, and Les papillons de nuit (2025)—enter into a poetic dialogue with the legacy of her grandparents, Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, and their tradition of animistic, lyrical sculpture. While echoing this familial heritage, de Chabaneix introduces a more fragile, introspective sensibility. Her beings appear incomplete, tender, suspended between human, animal, and vegetal realms, material memories still in the process of becoming.
Across the exhibition, time feels softened. Childhood, intimacy, ancestry, and solitude are not narrated but felt—filtered through layers of ornament, symbolism, and painterly atmosphere. This emotional immediacy resonates deeply in the paintings of Joe Sorren (b. 1970). Guided by the artist’s philosophy of discovering rather than rendering, Sorren’s work emerges through a spontaneous transposition of emotion and imagination. His paintings—Not a Day Goes By – Aquarius, Mother and Child, and Imminent – Aries (2023–2025)—can be read as a form of surreal impressionism, where reality is perceived rather than reconstructed. In Sorren’s aftertime, emotion precedes form, and fantasy becomes a truthful mode of vision.
The contemplative dimension of the exhibition finds further expression in the work of Elen Bezhen (b. 1989). Rooted in symbolic realism, her paintings often situate figures near windows or within gardens—spaces that function as metaphors for inner life. The window becomes a threshold between interior and exterior, while the garden transforms into a cultivated psychological landscape. In works such as Portrait with an Apple, Teacup, Evening Songs of Crickets, and Viscum Album (2025), the aftertime unfolds as a quiet, meditative duration, inviting the viewer to linger rather than decode.
What ultimately unites the exhibition is not style, medium, or narrative, but a shared sensitivity to the afterimage in the way experiences persist once their immediate presence has faded. These works function as seeds planted in the fertile ground of contemplation. They grow slowly, unfolding meaning over time, resisting instant interpretation.
In The Aftertime, reality and fantasy do not oppose one another; they merge. The exhibition invites the viewer to slow down, to dwell in ambiguity, and to accept uncertainty as a generative space. Here, images do not resolve but rather they remain open, suspended, and alive, continuing their quiet work long after the moment of viewing has passed.
