Auxier Kline is pleased to present A Season in Hell, a show of 12 new paintings by the Brooklyn based painter Jeremy Sorese. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

This body of work aims to reconcile the artist’s personal lapse in his religious beliefs alongside his estranged father’s sudden fanatical embrace of the same conservative doctrine, through the compositing and rearranging of religious iconography. The paintings in this show, which takes its title from the sprawling prose poem by Arthur Rimbaud, explore the depression inherent in the loss of one’s faith in all things terrestrial—family, community, country—and how filling those spaces with the solidity of one’s spiritual calling is both a gift to oneself and a kind of madness. Much like Rimbaud’s tumultuous relationship with his devout Christian mother, Sorese finds himself rebelling against his father and channeling the impassable gulf between them through his work.

Each painting incorporates various quintessential religious elements without directly referencing specific Christian narratives, creating pastiches that embrace an artist’s sacrilegious impetus to repurpose art history without concern for divine significance. Angels, archetypes of religious piety, are synonymous with the highest form of Christian devotion. They are also the demons that populate hell, expelled from heaven by God for their pride, which parallels being spurned by a disappointed parent. This sense of abandonment permeates the work; figures are seen in repose, waiting, bored, and lost, which speaks to a lack of attachment to something larger than themselves. Rimbaud speaks to this in Une Saison en Enfer: L’Éclair:

“And we’ll exist by amusing ourselves, dreaming monstrous loves and fantastic universes, moaning and quarreling with the world’s shows, acrobat, beggar, artist, ruffian—priest!”

Motifs integral to religious painting, such as the depiction of the Holy Spirit, are introduced as flat graphic patterns, reminiscent of flames, doves, or stars, inspired by the felt banners which hung behind the altar in the artist’s childhood church. While the loss of that community is still acutely felt, in the nearly decade and a half since he saw himself as religious, the importance of acts of devotion has never left Sorese, his life as a believer in Christ replaced with his artistic practice. Although the distance between the artist and his father could not be greater, there is empathy and understanding in their shared need for the comfort of a ritualistic act. Be it in the studio or in a church pew, attempting to affirm one’s proximity to the divine through fixating on sacred images is an ageless human pursuit. Sorrow arises from the knowledge that this chasm cannot be repaired, regardless of how strong the feeling to do so remains, as both an artist and as a son. 

“I’ve created all the feasts, all the triumphs, all the dramas. I’ve tried to invent new flowers; new stars, new flesh, new languages. I believed I’d gained supernatural powers. Ah well! I must bury my imagination and my memories! Sweet glory as an artist and story-teller swept away!”