Fegefeuer 2018

Siegfried Zademack made "Fegefeuer," using a muted palette and meticulous brushwork to depict a mysterious and unsettling scene. The whole thing has this slick, surreal quality, it feels so real it must be synthetic. What strikes me most are the figures draped in white, standing like ghosts, guardians of something... but what? Each figure is meticulously rendered, the fabric cascading with almost sculptural precision. The folds catch the light, giving them weight, presence. Then you notice the slender, candle-topped poles rising above them, tiny flames flickering in the oppressive darkness. The contrast between the solidity of the draped figures and the fragility of those flames is just heartbreaking. It reminds me of some of the stranger, more surreal moments in Philip Guston's later work, that sense of something both familiar and deeply unsettling lurking just beneath the surface. Like Guston, Zademack embraces ambiguity. There's no easy explanation here, and maybe that's the point.