Must-See: Bobbi Essers Romanticizes Friendship

This review is part of a series of Must-See shows, in which a writer delivers a snapshot of a current exhibition  

Intimacy between lovers is usually afforded a higher status than platonic bonds. But passion can rage just as powerfully amongst friends. Bobbi Essers’s first UK solo show, ‘The World at Our Command’, is a celebration of those often overlooked connections. Across a range of large and small scale paintings, the artist presents splices of her companions’ bodies. She lingers over soft hair draped across exposed necks, cracked nails clutching bus railings and bare hips sitting on the toilet.

Essers’s layered compositions and high-flash photographic references evoke the unconstrained nature of Tumblr feeds, 2010s club photography and teenage scrapbooks. Her figures often appear androgynous, their faces never fully shown. Instead, the viewer gleans snapshots of individuals through recurring jewellery, tattoos and clothing. Despite these nods to members of her own friendship group, the paintings evoke a universal emotional experience.

The eponymous piece The World at Our Command (all works 2024) features a tangle of arms, hands and torsos across four horizontal sections; it is impossible to define to whom each body part belongs. A wide grin is hinted by the curve of a chin, but we see little else of this person’s face. What matters is the conjured feeling, the warm embrace of the work. Should We Just Keep Driving similarly plays with a split screen effect in its depiction of a nighttime road trip. A lean, scuffed shin takes centre stage, the skin rendered in tender detail. The implied camera angles place the viewer within the action, as though we are in the car, along for the ride.

Inspired by photographs of the artist and her mates on holiday, these paintings share a sense of escapism, focusing on the divine warmth of friendship rather than its challenges. They ache too with inevitable loss, the prospect of social groups dispersing in older age as friends move and lifestyles change. Essers holds onto the here and now, capturing her loved ones in the exhilarating, youthful heat of the moment.

Bobbi Essers's ‘The World at Our Command’ is on view at Unit Gallery, London until 8 December

_{Main image: Bobbi Essers, Show the way, 2024, oil paint on canvas, 40 × 90 cm. Courtesy: © Bobbi Essers and Unit Gallery, London}