Issy Wood—Magic Bullet

Im fall 2025, the Schinkel Pavillon will present the first large-scale solo exhibition in Germany by British artist Issy Wood (b. 1993). A new series of works will be on view that respond to the striking architecture of the site. Issy Wood captures our world with her tempting paintings–on canvas or on furniture covered in shiny velvet–based on her astute observation of objects, events and the human mind. The artist once ironically described herself as a "medieval millennial." Her distinguished, old-masterly painting fluctuate between realism and surrealism, a pictorial form that is as uncomfortable as it is seductive and which the New York art critic Barry Schwabsky described as "perverse realism." 

Despite, or because of, her anachronism in technology and subject matter, Wood seismographically records the sentiment of her generation in such a unique way. Her hyper-modern visual language stems from her iPhone, but she also draws on antiquated sources such as estate catalogs or stills from forgotten film classics. Obscure fetishes of the commodity world, old-fashioned and fashionable luxury goods, and archaic totems are imbued with allusions and personal experiences and, like her blog confessions, oscillate between disclosure and concealment. Objects and surfaces function as surrogates for the untouchable fears and desires of the inner and outer worlds, which clash harshly in her staggered images. Issy Wood captures the feeling of our time besides her blog posts also in her song lyrics.