Potions, poisons, and the social power dynamics enabling their use may not scream “love,” but for Sabrina Bockler, elements of trickery, revenge, and class relations have underpinned ritual unions throughout European history. In Coquette, the Brooklyn-based artist’s latest solo exhibition at Hashimoto Contemporary, Bockler creates a new series of paintings that explore women’s treatment in romantic dynamics and how they reclaim their own power. Employing miniscule brushstrokes to denote each hair on a dog, petal on a flower, thread on a gown, Bockler’s nearly obsessive attention to detail creates alluring scenes of foreboding circumstances wrapped in love, chaos, and revenge.

"Coquette,” writes the artist, “refers to a flirtatious woman, one who enjoys attracting and manipulating others' affections for her own amusement or advantage.” Bockler’s human and animal characters are tuned into the morals framing how a woman uses her feminine characteristics: if it’s for pleasure, she’s depraved; if it’s to please, there must be an ulterior motive. The Alchemist, Bockler admits, presents the most clear-cut example of her inquiries into how women—in any romantic situation—are framed as the villains. In a frilly pink dress evocative of the Rococo Era, an anonymous woman holds a small rooster in her lap while dipping a dagger into a green love potion. The scene conjures the likes of Madame de Montespan, a French courtesan and mistress to Louis XIV who was accused of using love potions to remain in the king's favor, all the while accidentally poisoning him. Her breast slipping out of her dress, the figure is also an allusion to the portraits of Agnès Sorel, a favorite mistress of King Charles VII of France who was controversially portrayed as the Virgin Mary in 1452. Marrying the stories of women with femme fatale reputations into a single figure, Bockler’s paintings speak to the history of women using love as a path to power they would have otherwise never achieved, prompting questions of how desire and trickery are now used against women.

No conversation of love would be complete without a discussion of beauty—the power of seduction it affords and the objectification it invites. A playful take on Venus, “the original impossible beauty standard,” Venus in Furs depicts a female Bichon Frisé as the goddess of beauty, her caretaker attempting to cover her engorged nipples as a nod to the “absurdity surrounding the objectification and policing of women's bodies.” Meanwhile, The Sirens depicts a pair of female sphynx cats exposing their skin folds like performers atop a table draped in a forest green tapestry. Reflecting the vulnerability of the female form, Bockler’s tantalizing animals beckon us to look closer, returning our gaze as pocket-mirror versions of ourselves.

Coquette opens on June 29th with a reception from 6-8 pm. The artist will be in attendance. A limited edition print signed and numbered by the artist will be available for purchase exclusively at the opening. For additional information, images, or press requests, email NYC@hashimotocontemporary.com

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