Andrew Reed Gallery is pleased to announce Doppelgänger, Patricia Geyerhahn’s first solo show. In Doppelgänger, the Brazilian-Austrian artist mines our grappling of self in the face of loss. The works do not represent our initial, emotionally charged response – oftentimes associated with grief – so much as who we are once we have had the time to process. Is that other ‘character’, as Patricia refers to her personages, entirely lost? Or, do they continue to exist within ourselves? This body of work also questions to what extent we are each formed in identity by those around us. While the scale of the works might imply where the focus lies on the selfhood versus the group, instead, Patricia interweaves scale and composition seamlessly, without predilection. 

The title work for the show, Doppelgänger?, is posed as a question. Is this double image of a ‘character’ indeed a reflection, or is it an apparition rooted in our mind? Volume of form is created here via the full application and utilization of monochrome. In the foreground figure, Patricia has left the linen untouched, save for the clear acrylic medium which subtly coats the surface of each of the paintings in the show. In Doppelgänger?, the protagonist leans in towards the other ‘character’, and in doing so, it also leans away from the viewer. This duality – of yearning and shame – is a common thread found throughout the show. Patricia leaves the interpretation of sentiment to the viewer, which is in turn informed by their own psyche. 

The smaller five paintings in the show are all placed within cherry wood frames fabricated by Patricia’s partner and fellow artist, Devin Düster. These works are thereby visually grounded in much the way that scale draws our attention to the largest four paintings in the show. Longingly and Far Away, the two works on opposite ends of the spectrum, both feature a single ‘character’ as focal point. In Longingly, this ‘character’ sits in a vase, and we follow the small orb of light in the distance which beckons to it. The clouds converge on this horizon line where the speck of light hovers. Is it again a case of duality, or here, is our vase-confined ‘character’ as unaware of what is in the distance as we might be? Similarly, in Far Away, the absence of medium implies the faintest fleck of light adjacent to the personage. Can this be taken as an indication that our ‘character’ is not alone in this journey, or is it a phenomena without such a resolution?