Based in New York, St John’s paintings engage in a kind of period play. He unpacks the motifs, material standards, and stylistic flourishes of old masters—particularly Rembrandt and Vermeer—using them as visual references to recast those around him, often glamorous queer and trans personalities he discovers on social media. (His most recent show, Ride the Tiger at Caelum Gallery, abounded with such subjects, outfitted in crisp white neck ruffles, jewels, or posed with clusters of grapes).
St John became interested in painting during college, when a friend showed him Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson’s The Sleep of Endymion (1791), based on the ancient Greek narrative. Its themes are enduring—beauty fetishism, possessiveness, the desire to preserve youth or at the very least, stall death—and still intrigue St John. His deft, meticulous and sensuous images, made exclusively with oils, are meditations on classical beauty, image manipulation, fame and time.
In the figurative, time-bending renderings of Will St John, New York personalities—think the actor Hari Nef, actress Patricia Black, gallerist and musician Ruby Zarsky, and the artist’s own children—are cannily inserted into the visual language of Dutch Golden Age masters. In one large-scale portrait, set against a moody sky, the metal bar of a nipple piercing glints on a pale, pert breast; in another, folding drapery is printed with Bape-like camouflage, unrolling in cartoonish clouds of mustard and green.
Photo: Colleen Barry