Seth Pick's 'No Long Term (the last paintings)' at Galerie Tobias Naehring

Seth Pick (b. 1985, Reading, based in Berlin) presents nine new paintings in 'No Long Term (the last paintings)' at Galerie Tobias Naehring in Leipzig, on view through June 20, 2026. The works on oil on linen feature figures, interiors, symbolic fragments, and organic forms in a state of perpetual transformation, where bodies become landscape and structures become flesh. The press release is a conversation between Seth Pick and a near-anagram, Pick Seth, reflecting the artist's interest in doubling. The exhibition title borrows from Mark Fisher's sense of a present without future orientation, with the parenthetical 'the last paintings' left ambiguous. Notable works include 'Flaisch macht Flaisch' (2026), a compressed portrait of a crying face; 'Hellmouth (transformation of freedom into surplus alienation)' (2026) with limb-like elements and a vertical eye; 'Joy and Dancing after Botticelli' (2026) featuring a grinning face; 'Door' (2026) with a female figure and bat-like wings; and monochromatic pieces 'Murmur' (2026) and 'Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei' (2026). Pick's line work is compulsive and virtuosic, dissolving distinctions between body and environment. The chromatic range includes vibrant reds, deep blues, and electric turquoises. Pick, who dismantled his practice after injury and self-diagnosed failure, describes his paintings as being about presence rather than narrative, drawing on Deleuze's concept of the figural via Lyotard.