Butterflies, portraits, children’s drawings and other symbols of the frailty of existence are all executed in stark profile with an uncanny level of realism. Fascinated by questions of perception and representation, for the past several years René Wirths has developed a meticulous painting technique with works rigorously composed and set against a white background. He ‘poses’ his ‘subjects’ under natural light in his studio and then reproduces exactly what he perceives, without preconceptions regarding trueness to life and realism. It is a technique that forces the viewer into a head-on confrontation with the subject.

Lying somewhere between conceptual art and hyperrealism, his works reveal the flaws in our perception and indirectly explore the artist’s perplexity with the world. A seemingly scrappy children’s drawing, an open palm, a moth, an outsized loaf of bread: an unexpected succession of subjects that, when viewed as a whole, imperceptibly reveals a form of self-portrait.