Wish Fulfilment examines how aspirations and wants are expressed through – and even conjured by – images. Five oil paintings recreate on wooden panels, images of acceptance letters from prestigious American colleges that were anonymously shared on public forums. Some of these conform to a traditional letter format, while others display the animated confetti and streamers of online portal pages. Gaps between the shape of the original image and the support were filled with flat fields of the corresponding college colours. 

The sixth painting is a copy of Bellini’s The Assassination of St Peter Martyr (c. 1507) held in the collection of the National Gallery, London. St Peter holds the record for the fastest canonisation of any saint, beatified only eleven months after he died in 1252 at the hands of Cathars. A heretical Christian sect, the Cathars were prominent from the 12th to the 14th century and received heavy prosecution from the Catholic Church, most famously in the Albigensian Crusade. By the time of St Peter’s martyrdom, the war had been over for more than twenty years, provoked by the 1209 assassination of Pierre de Castelnau, who is considered a lower-ranked martyr, a Beatus rather than a full Saint. Saint Peter’s assassin eventually confessed his crimes and was admitted to the Catholic Church, later even being afforded the rank of Beatus as well. There is now extensive debate as to whether the Cathars existed at all in any organised form, and it is considered likely that they were – at least in part – contrived to give license for invasions of the areas they allegedly occupied.

Executed at an identical scale, these works share a quality of exactitude. The sequential progression of lettering echoes the progressive accumulation of underpainting and glazes that create an illusive sensation of depth, receding into the tree line behind. From each piece of type to its neighbour, slight variance and odd tricks of opacity arise; traces of the hand persist, even in the monastically precise task of copying. Areas of action are clearly demarcated – aggressors and victims alike move in prescribed, even mechanistic arrangements towards unconsidered ends. Through meticulous effort, these works embody the hazy promise of reward for good behaviour. 

– Text by Loqui Paatsch