{"id":121252,"date":"2025-11-04T12:50:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T12:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/121252\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T12:50:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T12:50:15","slug":"rising-painter-emil-sands-finds-beauty-in-the-vulnerability-of-the-human-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/121252\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising Painter Emil Sands Finds Beauty in the Vulnerability of the Human Form"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emil Sands<\/a> first saw Doryphoros, Polykleitos\u2019s fifth-century BCE sculpture of the \u201cideal man,\u201d during one of his childhood trips to the British Museum<\/a> with his grandfather. \u201cI remember standing in front of this body, this fucking perfect body\u2014an unattainable body for anyone\u2014and feeling really like I understood it,\u201d Sands told me during a recent visit to his New York studio.<\/p>\n

The statue\u2019s contrapposto<\/a> stance\u2014one hip shifted over one weight-bearing leg\u2014was deliberately imbalanced. \u201cIt was honest in a way that most things aren\u2019t,\u201d Sands said. What struck him most wasn\u2019t the figure\u2019s perfection but its asymmetry\u2014its embodiment of the tension between stability and strain. For Sands, that conflict was familiar. The British artist was diagnosed with a form of cerebral palsy as a child, and his body was often measured and corrected in the course of treatment. It made him acutely aware of his own form from an early age.<\/p>\n

Today, Sands obsessively paints bodies\u2014imagined, inspired by friends, or his own. These figures inhabit isolated, sometimes eerie, landscapes, often near water. The resulting impressionistic tableaux present an intimate study of the human form, where partially bare bodies are subject to the same attention that Sands gives himself. <\/p>\n

To say these paintings have generated buzz would be an understatement. When we met in August, Sands was clearing out his Williamsburg studio, preparing to fly to Venice for a residency with Victoria Miro<\/a>, where he\u2019ll stage a solo show following the residency. He will also participate in a three-person show in Victoria Miro\u2019s London gallery later this month. This follows a previous residency in Mexico City with the gallery JO-HS<\/a> and a solo exhibition at Kasmin (now Olney Gleason<\/a>) earlier this year. This level of attention from influential art world players is especially notable, given that the 27-year-old only began painting seriously a few years ago.<\/p>\n

In fact, until 2020, Sands thought of himself as primarily a writer. But he had made art throughout his childhood, even enrolling in a one-year program for painting at Central Saint Martins before attending Cambridge to study classics. He chose this field precisely because of how ancient art\u2019s treatment of the body matched his own preoccupations. \u201cThe body is a central way to understand the world,\u201d he said, explaining that idea as the foundation of his academic studies and, eventually, his artwork.<\/p>\n

Sands says his first real foray into painting began during the COVID-19 lockdown, when he took refuge in his family\u2019s garage in London. \u201cI was so nervous to paint anything,\u201d he remembered. \u201cI just painted self-portraits, self-portraits, self-portraits.\u201d He joked that he worried his mother would think he was incurably self-obsessed.<\/p>\n

\"Emil\"Emil<\/p>\n

Soon after, in 2022, Sands won the Henry Fellowship to study art and writing at Yale. There, he turned his gaze outwards, learning from other people\u2019s bodies and postures, not just his own. At this time, he colored his figures in radioactive greens, purples, and reds, as seen in his ethereal figurative painting Staying in Line (2023), which features five naked bodies processing around a maypole. This work was among those included in his debut solo show at the storied downtown gallery Tibor de Nagy<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n

That same year, he got his major break as a writer from an essay<\/a> published in The Atlantic. The title gets to the point: \u201cSociety Tells Me to Celebrate My Disability. What If I Don\u2019t Want To?\u201d Sands described the thesis to me in even franker terms: \u201cIt would be lovely to celebrate difference and yes, it would be gorgeous if I love my body, but it would also be a lie,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The essay landed him a book deal, and now he divides his days between his two professions\u2014starting to write as early as 6 a.m., then painting late into the night. His manuscript is due in January. <\/p>\n

Before starting his paintings, Sands collects tons of reference photos. Sometimes, he will ask a friend to model for a photograph, or will find a random landscape that resonates with him. He often mashes unrelated images together to create hybrid compositions that set a particular mood. Sands describes the approach as \u201cvery higgledy-piggledy.\u201d <\/p>\n

At first, Sands\u2019s figures existed almost exclusively in kaleidoscopic dreamscapes. However, by the time he presented his solo show with JO-HS in 2024, his focus had shifted. In this body of work, the setting was often coastal\u2014though most paintings retained an eerie, dark quality. These motifs persisted in his solo show with Kasmin earlier this year, where subjects often faced away from the viewer and out towards an expanse of water, as in Tide pool crab land (2024) and The last holiday (2024).<\/p>\n

\"Emil<\/p>\n

In these paintings, Sands\u2019s gaze lingers on the contours of bodies\u2014the curve of a shoulder, the shadows cast across a back. One might assume that Sands\u2019s vantage point is purely romantic. In some ways, his gaze is covetous, shaped by his childhood and his disability, which has made the sight of a \u201cnormal,\u201d functioning body into a source of fascination and longing. As he explains, the work is less about desire itself than about his developing understanding of his own perspective. \u201cI\u2019ve had to retrain myself to understand that I see the world and look at the world in a really voyeuristic, desirous way,\u201d he said, explaining that he \u201calways wanted to be different and still want[s] to be different.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Sands\u2019s recent work, his figures appear alongside stone sculptures, inspired by his long-held interest in Greco-Roman art. The last, then-untitled painting in his studio before he completed his move out features two women in swimsuits. The right side of the canvas is dominated by a close-up view of the posterior of Praxiteles<\/a>\u2019s fourth-century BCE sculpture Aphrodite of Knidos, which Sands told me was exceptionally provocative in the ancient world. Allegedly, at least one man attempted to consummate his love for the stone goddess. The inclusion of statues links directly back to his academic studies, reflecting on how Greco-Roman artists used the body as an emblem of beauty and human striving. <\/p>\n

\"Emil<\/p>\n

Though he rarely paints self-portraits these days, Sands still creates work that reckons with who he is and what he wants. The best piece of advice he ever got was from fellow artist and close friend Chloe Wise<\/a>, after complaining to her about his self-doubt over not making the \u201csickest, most out-there, most cutting-edge avant-garde work,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI\u2019m painting people looking at their bodies in a reasonably traditional color palette,\u201d he lamented. Her blunt advice: \u201cEmil, just make what you want.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sands retains an admirable frankness\u2014the same quality that fueled his breakout essay and continues to shape his painting today. His paintings don\u2019t show us the ideal; they teach us to look at others and ourselves with \u201can awareness of foibles and hopefully, a tenderness\u201d towards the essential humanness of difference, he said. In the end, his work is an extension of himself\u2014and it feels true: \u201cThere\u2019s not another thing I could be making right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Artsy Vanguard 2026<\/p>\n

The Artsy Vanguard is now in its eighth year of highlighting the most promising artists working today. As 2026 approaches, we\u2019re celebrating 10 talents poised to become future leaders of contemporary art and culture. <\/p>\n

Explore more of The Artsy Vanguard 2026<\/a> and browse works by the artists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

MR<\/p>\n

\"MR\"<\/p>\n

Maxwell Rabb<\/p>\n

Maxwell Rabb (Max) is a writer. Before joining Artsy in October 2023, he obtained an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from the University of Georgia. Outside of Artsy, his bylines include the Washington Post, i-D, and the Chicago Reader. He lives in New York City, by way of Atlanta, New Orleans, and Chicago.<\/p>\n

Video by Pushpin Films \/ Giulia Fassina for Artsy.<\/p>\n

Thumbnail: Portrait of Emil Sands by Giulia Fassina for Artsy, 2025; Emil Sands, from left to right: \u201cThe last holiday,\u201d 2024, and \u201cThe invitation,\u201d 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Olney Gleason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emil Sands first saw Doryphoros, Polykleitos\u2019s fifth-century BCE sculpture of the \u201cideal man,\u201d during one of his childhood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[21362,307,304,305,306,308,72310,93,61,60,24285,72311,41861],"class_list":{"0":"post-121252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artist-profiles","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-emil-sands","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-maxwell-rabb","19":"tag-olney-gleason","20":"tag-vanguard"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}