There’s always something a little bit unsettling about Sabrina Bockler’s dynamic paintings, although it can sometimes take a moment to narrow down the reason why. At first glance, a table appears sumptuously set, or a floral scene unfolds with brilliant hues. Upon further inspection, we’ll notice a two-headed goose, a table of food being ravaged by cats and dogs, or the disquieting feeling you’re being watched.
Bockler combines glowy, Rococo-esque figures with elements of Dutch Golden Age painting, specifically still-lifes that incorporate tables full of flowers, dead game, and decomposing fruit. She also taps into romance, allegory, and the hunting genre, portraying dogs leaping after prey or fighting with one another over scraps.
A sense of chaos is always present in Bockler’s maximalist paintings, but to varying degrees. “Through the Glass Darkly,” for example, teeters on the edge of strangeness, depicting a seemingly calm tablescape with vessels full of wine interspersed among peonies, fruit, and fish. And yet, in the vein of traditional vanitas paintings, an abandoned open pomegranate suggests things are not as ideal as they seem. The plated fish stare blankly at the viewer, and mysteriously disembodied eyes peer through glasses of wine.
In other works, like “Beg, Borrow, and Steal,” which is currently on view in the group exhibition Symposium at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in West Palm Beach, “disorder” only begins to describe the anarchic scene of dogs and cats in a frenzy over a table of produce, flowers, seafood, and meat. As much as we associate these lavish scenes with refinement and wealth, there is also a disquieting undercurrent that at times bubbles up to the surface in the form of unnaturalness or even pure mania.
Bockler’s work, including a few of the pieces seen below, will go on view at Beers London in the artist’s solo exhibition titled Impending Rapture, which runs from January 15 to February 28. See more on Bockler’s website and Instagram.
