The Spectral Choreographies of Sarah Bechter

A figure in a carnival outfit stands on a stage before a sumptuous gold-and-red curtain. Their confident posture, legs apart, is at odds with the insubstantial nature of their body, which melds, chameleon-like, with the backdrop. A head peers out from a gap in the curtains and nestles in the crook of the standing figure’s arm, making the scene appear like a tired comedy sketch. Lacking substance, the protagonists of Sarah Bechter’s All About The Standing (all works 2025) hover on the threshold between the amusing and the elegiac. Part of ‘Jostle’, the artist’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman in Vienna, this painting is representative for a show that traffics in paradox, where revelation is equipoised by concealment, opulence by destitution.

Here, Bechter – who has become known in recent years for her freestanding triptychs – opts to display exclusively wall-hung paintings that continue her exploration of androgynous, semi-transparent phantasmas drifting through dreamlike scenarios. Devoid of distinguishing features, the figures appear trapped in a performative, transitional realm, bending and stretching themselves through grandiose spaces reminiscent of lavish mansions or churches – recurring settings in Bechter’s works. One character balances precariously on a balustrade beneath an abstract rendition of a baroque ceiling painting (Unbalancing This Structure). Another extends in a bridge pose to form an archway (Framing It For You). These refined architectures are not merely decorative backdrops but manifestations of patriarchal power linked to wealth and social status. Bechter’s figures don’t just occupy these spaces; they are actively shaped by them. 

This is also evident in Jostle, But Festive where a crowd dances in a dark-velvet salon, their corporeal outlines held together only by dynamic, white-pink lines. The scene captures a moment of ecstasy – at once joyful and aggressive, collective and individual – where bodies merge, push and cling in a complex social performance. The crowd appears in a trance-like state, enhanced by the glow of glamorous chandeliers. Yet, the precarity with which Bechter depicts her subjects, on the very precipice of vanishing into their elegant surroundings, makes clear that this ballroom is no escapist shelter. Rather, Jostle, But Festive implicates its revellers in the very structures of dominance they seem to resist.

The exhibition pulses with the notion that we are deeply entangled in the world’s folds, breaking the illusion of us being independent observers. This tension – between the self and its surroundings – extends to Bechter’s media-reflexive handling of fore- and background, image and surface. Rather than start with a pristine canvas, she primes her paintings with transparent gesso and pigment. These gestural marks become a visual field already in motion. From here, the image emerges without preparatory sketching.

This principle of ‘pre-painting’ also informs the artist’s smaller, more abstract works. In That Is Plenty, the back and soles of a kneeling figure appear in bluish-grey tones with rust-red and purple highlights. Two indistinct heads gaze in opposite directions. Here, the impulse towards both symbiosis and singularity are rendered in watery detail. In preparation of this canvas, ink is applied to the wet textile before it’s stretched. This fluid colouring process allows the material to generate its own patterns. Oil is added later, teasing the figurative out of the abstract. Bechter’s approach recalls surrealist automatism, where form arises from intuition and chance. The results are melancholic and unstable, decipherable forms flickering in and out of view. 

Bechter’s paintings seduce, but never without resistance. Despite their hypnotic pull, the figures and surfaces in ‘Jostle’ are always threatening to come undone. Just when the illusion settles, it’s punctured: unmarked canvas reappears, the construction is revealed and the fragile choreography of identity resumes.

Sarah Bechter’s ‘Jostle’ is on view at Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Vienna, until 12 July 

_{Main image: Sarah Bechter, Why Are You Just So In Love With Definitions (detail), 2024, ink and oil on cotton, 90 × 150 cm. Photograph: © Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman / kunstdokumentation.com}