Let ME HELP GET THIS SHIRT: OFF: A new conceptual art collection

To preface: these works are an immediate response to what is true to me right now; they are honest.

shirt impressions
I like a guy who wears a shirt well. If he really looks good in it, it's not long until I'm helping him take it off. To me, these motions are so performative. There is so much I learn about my partner/s from the way they treat their clothes. Sometimes shirts are folded and re-buttoned, placed with care to the side. Often they are torn off fervently and discarded; totally abstract and almost unidentifiable except for a cuff or collar that sticks out the side. Rolling over in bed, I can see these forms and folds. Their uniqueness is caused by the pace and effort that has been put into removing them. The longer I study them the sadder I feel when they are eventually picked up. Knowing the moment is over, I redress too. Each time I bring a new lover home, the shirts become timers. Measuring the moments and cueing me when they have passed.
This way of viewing presence and absence became a major concept in this collection. I wanted to reproduce this impermanence; make it last longer so that the absence wouldn't feel too permanent. This desire influenced the first work I created for this collection: shirt impressions. I had spent time observing and studying how my lovers and I had undressed ourselves or eachother and the way clothing was tossed aside onto surfaces, furniture and on pre-existing piles of clothes.

The works were made using three shirts from three different partners I had during 2022. In the studio I soaked these in tubs of enamel paint and reproduced real motions of removing a shirt and tossing, folding, placing. putting, chucking and throwing it onto a surface. The pace and effort influenced the abstraction of these images. Certain impressions showed a carefully detailed silhouette while others became fold and form. In these reproductions, I notice that some images even become bodily. Appearing
organ-like and organic. The ironic way they almost express something that is so lifegiving and human is a gentle suggestion that the absence in these moments is within me, not on my floor.

partial nudes
Before I was fixated on the shirt I focused on the body. The body is the centre and everything else is peripheral. I could gaze for hours at my partners. They are all beautiful, so incredibly sensual and nonchalant. There is not a straight line in the body; they're all curved, sometimes impossibly curved In the hot moments of intimacy I see the body as a whole, the movement or stillness is holistic, every hair and muscle acting as one. When the dopamine and endorphins are waning I start to gaze at individual parts of their bodies. I notice how one's shoulder blade sticks out, or their wrist bends slightly to the right; the curvature of a nose, the arc in someones lips. These focused observations
break down the body into parts that can hold my attention for a minute or an hour.

The partial nude became the next influence for this collection. I wanted to take the viewer's gaze and set it upon that small focus point. The artworks are painted in oil using very fine brushstrokes to give a heightened smoothness to the skin. The application of paint in this way mimics a feeling, rather than a reality. It is a representation of physically feeling skin on skin. I wanted to achieve a warmness a closeness. The scale of the body depicted was also something that I strongly considered. When the viewer stands far from the work, it seems like the body is smaller than a real person, but as the image is approached, the size shifts from true scale to larger-than-life. It is important for the partial nudes to be this size as it enhances that closeness. To be so close to another body in their most simple form is a privilege. In these moments I feel trust, excitement, intimidation, abandonment and admiration.

- Max de Roy