Jesse Mockrin
Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Work from The marks of a stranger at Nathalie Karg Gallery.
“What makes Jesse Mockrin’s paintings sing is what she leaves out. All the pieces in The Marks of a Stranger at Nathalie Karg Gallery were inspired by Renaissance and post-Renaissance depictions of the rape of Lucretia, the possibly mythical royal outrage that ancient Romans credited with spurring them to oust their kings and found a republic. On smaller canvases, Ms. Mockrin crops out the woman’s face and most of her body, along with any context, everything but an elegant silver dagger pressing into bloodless, yielding flesh. You’re reminded of the value we still put on possession, in all its senses, the sexual, the impassioned, the violent, and of the all too common urge to destroy what we admire. In the larger scenes, Ms. Mockrin crops less, to even more powerful effect. Two Lucretias turn toward each other, in the diptych Weep into my eyes, their faces disappearing into the gap between the canvases. This gap is something like the caesura, or metrical break in a line of poetry, and it has its violent and sexual subtext, too. But most of all it’s a brilliant demonstration of how dramatically we can change our perspective on art history without changing the history itself.” – Will Heinrich