The Yellow Book

The Yellow Book, an exhibition by Justin Fitzpatrick at Galerie Sultana, Paris, explores the theme of bitterness and its relationship with time. The works examine how bitterness, an emotion often disavowed for its refusal of conversion into growth or redemption, stands in contrast to a culture valuing productivity and self-improvement. It is presented as an affect that emphasizes immanence and cyclical rhythms, aligning with myth rather than historical progression.

The paintings in the exhibition manifest this theoretical account of bitterness through dense patterning and obsessive detail, echoing the visual strategies of the Decadent movement. Organic and architectural forms, such as glass nerves, muscle fibres, and fractured structures, evoke a materiality marked by corrosion. Figures are presented as emblems of bitterness, including depictions inspired by Sergei Eisenstein's drawing of Prometheus, Nijinsky, and Pasolini's Teorema. The exhibition's title references The Yellow Book, a periodical associated with Oscar Wilde and the anxieties surrounding sexuality and corruption in the 1890s, signaling an intersection of decadent art, queerness, and a melancholic attention to time.