Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

One of the more exciting young artists today, Johanna Helmuth came to her own with her first solo show, “Disfigure,” generating a lot of buzz for paintings that seem benign at first look but are actually loaded with dark and menacing insinuations. Her power is on full display in “Sorry Father for I have Sinned,” an allegory on the fundamental conflict between a man and his faith as well as the instability of domestic relations. In sharp, violent strokes created by a palette knife, the scene shows a man clasping his head in rage as the woman draws her knees up to her chin in a posture of fear and helplessness.