Intimacy and Omission in Kerlin Gallery’s Blue Moon Shadow

“Marcel Vidal strives to “fragment context and interrogate how images construct narrative and meaning”. Cropped and obscured, blue moon shadow’s thirteen oil on linen paintings hold “partial figures, coded gestures, and authority”. From wilting monstera plants to neon-painted nails, Vidal refuses to furnish his canvas with complete images. Only shards and splinters of subject matter find expression, enlarged and focalised with sharp, precise brushwork, producing an unsettling and perturbing curiosity in their onlooker. In “Blue tie”, for example, a zoomed-in perspective of a politician-esque figure standing behind a blurred microphone makes the canvas feel as though it were mercilessly carved out from a larger painting. It’s up to us, Vidal seems to imply, to fill in the gaps — to assume who the figure is, to supply them with a narrative. Elsewhere, context is less needed, and the emphasis of the piece is more firmly on style. In his continuing “Monstera” series, plant leaves are coated in a vibrant, neon green. Surrealist, almost, the leaves and their holes seem to melt and warp, a piercing, unnatural interplay of light and shadow rendering the subject strange and out of place. Moreover, it is the Kerlin Gallery’s exhibition space which reinforces this out-of-placeness; thirteen paintings border a vast concrete floor, the walls and ceiling a pale and clinical white. Even reaching the exhibition space seems to have been curated as a journey into an artistic, imaginatively potent non-place, as visitors trace their way from the gallery’s entrance through long windowless corridors and up flights of stairs. An apt location, then, to encounter an artist whose work endeavours to dislocate and ambiguate. Nonetheless, it remains a slightly jarring experience; the room’s open, unmoored space is difficult to find comfort in. When Vidal’s work isn’t surreal, it’s intensely realistic. Hands, clasped and contorted, present themselves as a prevalent motif, pale, pink and wrinkled skin portrayed with a relentless precision and refinement. At times obscured, at times foregrounded, these hands become a sign and mediator of human identity for Vidal, punctuated, oftentimes, with glossy red and green nail varnish. Throughout his oeuvre, despite his delicate focus on the real, his subjects are illuminated with a disquieting light source, emanating from an unknown location far outside the framed canvas. Filtered through this bright light, images become almost unnerving, as if captured in an overexposed photograph. It’s this displacement from realism, then, that contributes to Vidal’s unique style and perspective, one that obscures and defamiliarises ordinary, everyday objects, one that leaves the viewer to figure out for themselves what to do with these unsettling, alluring pieces of art. Marcel Vidal’s blue moon shadow runs until April 18th, 2026, at the Kerlin Gallery. Free in, no tickets required.

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