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Joachim Lambrechts & Kottie Paloma
Bend Sinister

Bend Sinister brings together Belgian artist Joachim Lambrechts and American artist Kottie Paloma in a striking and unguarded duo exhibition—both making their debut at Schönfeld Gallery. Though they first connected via Instagram, this marks their first exhibition together. United by a supple imagination and an unflinching directness, both artists probe the human condition within our sublunary world—never without humor, and always in distinctly individual ways. 

Joachim Lambrechts presents a new body of work centered on the female nude. Each painting returns to a recurring figure, defined by bold black contours and often positioned in provocative, charged poses. While more restrained than his earlier works, these paintings carry a concentrated intensity—an energetic field that feels both controlled and forceful. 

Kottie Paloma, exhibiting in Belgium for the first time, presents recent paintings, drawings, and sculptures. His clay works—clay heads and human figures placed on handmade mosaic plinths—balance humor with a quiet sense of tragedy, that I coin as “tragicomic”. They appear to celebrate, or perhaps expose, the inherent awkwardness of existence. 

The exhibition title, coined by Paloma, draws from heraldry: a “bend sinister” is a diagonal band crossing a coat of arms from the bearer’s left to right—appearing reversed to the viewer. It suggests inversion, mirroring, and dissonance. The phrase also resonates culturally, recalling the 1986 album Bend Sinister by The Fall, itself borrowing from Vladimir Nabokov’s 1947 novel. For Paloma, the title evokes not only music and symbolism, but also the unfamiliarity of heraldic identity within an American context. Above all, it captures a mood—one reflected in the twisted, bent, and distorted figures that inhabit both artists’ work. 

Lambrechts first gained international recognition through street art before expanding into canvas around 2010, painting directly without preparatory sketches. While earlier works featured vivid scenes populated by superheroes, musicians, and dynamic motifs, this new series marks a shift. Large-scale canvases focus on a singular, a recurring female figure, rendered in thick black lines and a muted palette of greyish pinks. The reduction in color intensifies the confrontation—stripping the work down to gesture, contour, and presence. 

As Lambrechts describes: 

“In this body of work, painting begins with a single figure that recurs throughout. The entire series features a female nude—present yet withheld. The face is never visible. By removing facial identity, the figure resists psychological interpretation, shifting attention toward form, contour, and gesture. What remains is posture, tension, and exposure—the body as structure rather than portrait. These works do not attempt to depict a person, but to locate a balance between proximity and distance. The figure hovers between intimacy and inaccessibility—simultaneously available and unreachable. This tension forms the core of the series. Though rooted in personal experience, the paintings resist narrative. Love is not illustrated but destabilized. The works revolve around connection, absence, and the paradox of desiring what cannot be fully grasped. The image drifts between presence and disappearance, between embodiment and abstraction. The absence of a face intensifies this condition. Without a gaze returned, the viewer encounters vulnerability without resolution. The paintings exist within that unresolved space—where connection persists yet remains incomplete.” 

Kottie Paloma, who has lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Berlin before relocating to Vienna in 2023, is internationally recognized for works that probe the darker undercurrents of society. His paintings and drawings are rendered in a loose, immediate manner, often limited to just two colors. Around four years ago, he began focusing on the female nude—archetypal figures that defy passivity. Drawing early inspiration from prehistoric cave painting, Paloma refers to his works as “dumb paintings,” embracing a deliberately clumsy, raw, and slightly soiled aesthetic—messy, but never without control. 

“I’m constantly searching for new compositions,” he says, reflecting on works such as The Gatekeeper and The Puppeteers, and Ein Scheißhaufen. “As a child, I was fascinated by piles of objects—I saw something sculptural in them.” In Ein Scheißhaufen, figures collapse into one another in a dense accumulation. “Sometimes life just feels like a pile of shit,” he remarks. In The Gatekeeper and The Puppeteers, he loosely references systems of control—across politics, Hollywood, the music industry, and the art world—as well as in everyday life. “Information should be free,” he adds. “Instead, we have corporations influencing politicians, dealers shaping what art is seen, and algorithms deciding visibility.” 

Paloma’s process is intuitive: paintings give rise to drawings, which in turn lead to sculpture. Since late 2024, he has worked with clay in Vienna, developing ceramic heads and figures—either seated or standing on handmade plinths. These sculptures, often white or clay-red with irregular patches of white, are roughly formed, marked by cracks he associates with shedding skin. “After the heads, I began making full figures, inspired by the statues atop government buildings here in Vienna,” he explains. “They’re these white figures—maybe gods, maybe symbols—overlooking the city. But there’s a certain arrogance to them. I see them as looking down on us, as if judging us as we pass by. I wanted to create my own versions: figures that are comic, but also reflective of the human condition—bringing the ordinary person into view.” 

Christine Vuegen 

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Location
Brussels
Date
Now open:  —

“Bend Sinister reflects a mood of inversion, where the familiar turns strange, and the strange feels oddly close.”

Artists in this exhibition