Jochem Mestriner creates paintings that seduce and poison in equal measure. Working in extended sessions, he builds surfaces through layers of pigment, solvent, and gestural residue. These materials are as chemically volatile as they are visually compelling. The canvas becomes a site of slow intoxication: what attracts the eye is also what unsettles it. 

Materiality is central to this project. The sheen of certain pigments, the residue left by a solvent-wiped surface, or the ghost of a former composition buried beneath new layers are not incidental qualities. They are the primary means by which the paintings perform their attraction. Rooted in the traditions of Dutch Still life and genre painting, informed by literature, philosophy, art history and biology, Mestriner's work operates at the threshold between beauty and harm, between the living and the preserved. His paintings do not illustrate this condition; they enact it.