Nathalie Deshairs, Cavalier Gallery, New York, NY (2024)

I have always been in the closet when it comes to my interest in fashion. It’s an easy topic to dismiss and toss into the vapid culture bucket. Yet what we wear (or don’t) and how we wear it (or don’t) communicates so much about history and society, and its people. Mid 20th century fashion helped shape a postwar aesthetic about women roles, as well as their bodies and I believe it lingers through today. The beauty aesthetic of fashion is what caught my eye in French painter Nathalie Deshairs show (again, a stumble into on an afternoon gallery crawl). A series of shapes on oil on canvas transform into dreamy, ethereal dresses gowns and robes—they were simply lovely to look at, much like how we treat the fashionable woman. But look closer: imperfections, drips, layers and scrapes give simple shapes complexity. At first look, they are bits of calm beauty, but then you realize beautiful messiness of it all.

Photo: Nathalie Deshairs, Les Passeurs d'eau 3 (2024)