Lucas Kaiser

Lucas Kaiser makes figures on paper in pencil, pastel, pigment powder and oil stick, building images that sit between flat representation and simulated sculptural volume. Drawing on sculptural traditions and the act of making figures, he sets generic, pictogram-like bodies against figures that read as possible real people. Kaiser hand-draws his figures, deliberately contaminating the generalised human form. His work turns on the uncanny valley, the point at which an almost lifelike figure becomes eerie, and on the contrast between the uncanny and aesthetic allure. He takes clichés of the idyll and unsettles them through formal interventions, and builds his pictures in layers so that details unfold slowly and the viewer keeps reassessing their position in front of the work.