Of the face, all that remains is the lower profile: a closed mouth and chin hanging from a taut neck adorned with a silver collar.
Of the body, also truncated, all that remains is the bust and groin adorned with a sequined bodice and satin panties. It takes audacity and talent to dare to paint a truncated full-length portrait in a tight frame, over 2 m high to boot.

Born in Sweden in 1983 and a graduate of the Royal School of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Sara-Vide Ericson - who is having her first solo exhibition in France at the Swedish Institute - has both. Mixing highly textured areas with those where the canvas is almost left bare, her portraits and landscapes bear witness to a mastery and originality of material.

Not hesitating to mix blood and horsehair with her paint, she uses pastry bags to apply the raw paint in thick threads, giving her canvases a sculptural texture that is visible when you get close. Far from the flatness of many of today's figurative paintings, everything vibrates and sparkles in her canvases: here, the shimmering waters of a swamp; here, the glitter of a wild horse's coat; and, in our disturbing portrait, the glitter of sequins and satin.

But it's not just these subtle effects of material that give this painting its strength and bewitching power. It's also the no less subtle use of out-of-frame and monumentality, of enlargement, which turns the canvas into a surface of projection and identification for the viewer. That's where the mystery lies...

"DESIRE OF THE TAIL BY SARA-VIDE ERICSON"
INSTITUT SUÉDOIS
11, RUE PAYENNE, PARIS 3E
UNTIL FEBRUARY 18, 2024
INSTITUTSUEDOIS.FR