In this 172cm x 278cm long oil painting the British artist Jake Wood-Evans gives us a glimpse of a long-forgotten Venus. As if illuminated by a reflector, a Botticelli-Venus silhouette reveals itself, which is encased in soft, cold shades of blue. The radiant figure, whose face can no longer be recognized, sits contrapostally in a slightly suggested shell. The black-brown shadows, which try to grip the weak rays of Venus in a nebulous, dynamic manner from left and right, not only have a mystical effect, but also point to an eternal struggle between the lights and the shadows. These shadows, which probably also engulfed the gods Zephyr, Chlora and Hora, have a strong materiality which is made visible by the overlapping and interlocking dark hues. What once represented a pure, beautiful goddess has now remained an elusive, bygone ideology. The artist gives us a last glimpse of an ancient ideal of beauty that seems to have sunk in the sea.
Text by Cezara-Maria Casian