Juxtapoz Magazine - No Longer, Not Yet-Paintings on Paper: Jonathan Wateridge @ GRIMM, Amsterdam

"When working on larger canvases, Wateridge documents the changes throughout their creation and the slow attritional process of altering figures and backgrounds within the compositions. Many of the paintings on paper are based on these erased moments, on the ghosts of previous decisions that took place on the picture plane, and become a way of rematerialising lost states."

"In these paintings, the staging from which the figures emerge seems quintessentially midcentury Los Angeles, yet suffused with a sense of the uncanny. Indeed, the often affluent surroundings serve not as places of respite but taut psychological dioramas where something ominous lurks out of view."

"The composition is driven by narrative but one which the viewer cannot fully calculate, this resistance to ready interpretation adding to a sense of unease. The treatment of the figures' faces varies from the tonal suggestion of eye socket, nose and mouth to more finite features that, though complete, still seem to dissolve into themselves."

Jonathan Wateridge's exhibition at GRIMM Amsterdam showcases paintings on paper that document the creative process of his larger works. These pieces capture erased moments and ghostly traces of previous artistic decisions, rematerializing lost compositional states. The paintings depict midcentury Los Angeles settings rendered with an unsettling psychological quality. Affluent modernist environments become tense psychological spaces where figures, dressed as social gathering attendees, appear disrupted or arrested in sudden movement. The compositions resist clear narrative interpretation, creating deliberate ambiguity. Facial treatments range from tonal suggestions to more defined features that seem to dissolve, contributing to the overall sense of unease and psychological discomfort throughout the exhibition.

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