Contributed by Amanda Church / Following the fleshy path of Rubens, Lucian Freud, Joan Semmel, and Cecily Brown, among many others, Camilla Fallon has recently focused her loose, lush brushwork on the female body’s midsection, specifically the navel. “The Navel Is the Center,” her current show at The Painting Center, consists of eight medium-scale paintings and four very small ones, most providing an intimate view of this inverted body part. Under such close scrutiny, it becomes symbolic, implying vulnerability, contemplation, and introspection.
The navel can look like a fishy mouth, as in Bloat, or a wound, as in Sitting, where deep crimson lines traverse the folds of flesh around it and pool in the opening itself. The giant hands resting on the thighs in the foreground suggest a form of defense or protection. The same outsize hands show up in Pretty Navel, like sentries on either side of the figure’s green bikini panties. In some of the paintings – Blue Breast, Butt, and Wound – stripes of light, seemingly coming through blinds, fall across the bodies like whip lashes or burns, as if the flesh has been incised or seared. Yet Fallon’s paintings are less impassioned or confrontational than those of some other contemporary artists who deal with the body – Jenny Saville and Tracey Emin, for example. Though raw and immediate, Fallon’s work retains a subtlety of affect.
With no faces visible, the up-close body fragments remain anonymous, which Fallon says is crucial here. Nevertheless, they present the self as well as conveying nameless exposure and concealment. From 2012 to 2019, Fallon painted a group of full-figure nude self-portraits – two cropped nudes draped with green scarves are included in this show – and followed them with a series of large-scale close-ups of hands. The navel paintings continue her critical investigation of the body. Despite an ostensibly narrow focus, they are insightful and wide-ranging in their implications about aging flesh and the perceived loss of desirability.
“Camilla Fallon: The Navel Is the Center,” The Painting Center, 547 West 27th Street, New York, NY. Through May 24, 2025.
About the author: Amanda Church is a painter and occasional writer living and working in New York City, where she is represented by High Noon Gallery. Eyelash, her favorite among the paintings she made in 2023, will be included in the New York Studio School’s summer show of Mercedes Matter Award winners, opening on June 12.
Congrats Camilla and thank you Amanda for such an insightful review of her new work.