Parataxis", by Grace Weaver at Galerie Max Hetzler

Tall, leaning bodies, compressed as in ancient reliefs, star in Grace Weaver's seventh solo exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler, presented in conjunction with Soy Capitán, also in Berlin. In "Parataxis" — a Greek term meaning "to place side by side" — the artist portrays domestic scenes where figures hold amphorae, sit on high-backed chairs, or raise glasses, in a visual repertoire that reduces lamps to triangles and furniture to geometric lines and planes. The paintings are born from successive layers of preparation until they resolve into a single, still-wet final layer, in which figure, background, and color emerge together; cobalt blues inspired by Mycenaean frescoes mix with vibrant primaries, woven directly onto the canvas surface. The rigid frontality of the figures recalls Mesopotamian cylinder seals and ancient reliefs, while broad shoulders and slender torsos echo the curvature of Trojan vases — a play of visual rhymes in which the human body and the domestic object obey the same formal logic, and emotional charge is conveyed less by gesture than by color, line, and interval.