Are Blytt, Untitled (Figure), 2018

Look closely at Are Blytt’s painting, and you can make out a phantasmagorical figure, barely visible, sheathed in sheer fabric, as if standing behind a curtain or under an X-ray light. The figure is a portrait of the artist’s young son, Sigurd Yves; a tender, ethereal painting about Fatherhood, that in its bare minimalism also touches on traditional notions of masculinity, as played out in the history of painting, and the psychoanalytic ideas of absence/presence.