“The true picture of the past flits by.”
–Walter Benjamin
Contributed by Romy Marcus Cohen / Photographs offer a false promise of perfect preservation. In her new show “Don’t Be a Stranger” at Trotter&Sholer, Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster grapples with the loss of a close friend through her continued exploration of the instability of images and the memories they hold. Working from a personal archive of vernacular photography, Lancaster turns snapshots into back-painted oil paintings on glass, drawing emotional intensity from the tension between recognition and anonymity, intimacy and distance, presence and absence.
By modifying the photos, Lancaster enshrines the carefree energy and invincibility of youth. In To Keep the Idiots Away, a shirtless young man fills the frame. His head is cropped out while his middle finger thrusts towards the viewer. Stripped of identifying features, the figure becomes a type rather than an individual. He’s the cool guy at the party, caught in a fleeting and unguarded moment by someone behind the lens. At the same time, Lancaster captures the social dynamics behind this scene – desire, performance, bravado, and casual intimacy. Closer examination reveals subtler interventions. The hand appears overexposed, blown out by intense light, which heightens the sense of proximity while also shifting attention away from the less legible foregrounded gesture. In other paintings, Lancaster uses pixelization, a technique relatively new to her practice, to strategically obscure critical parts of the image.
The source image in Heart and Brain is of a woman sitting in a man’s lap. They are sufficiently entwined that it is difficult to decipher who is holding the bottle they are sharing. While the original photo appears to have been taken on a pre-iPhone lo-fi film camera, the introduction of digitization situates the work itself in the present. Lancaster treats the image as though it were digital, obscuring identifying details with pixels. As a result, it no longer reliably documents the past, demonstrating how memories are continually reshaped and degraded. Lancaster’s process of building the images in reverse echoes the experience of memory. She paints highlights first, then the subject, and finally the background. At first glance, the work appears almost photorealistic, but the atmospheric quality of the paint and her strategic alterations lend it an overt uncanniness.
Two paintings are exceptions to the summer-nights mood of the show. Deep Down Hurt and Echoes and References appear to be self-portraits. They are among the most legible of the group, and key to an understated narrative. They depict Lancaster processing the pain of her loss. While the work recalls that of artists such as Gerhard Richter in the manipulation of imagery to compromise specificity and reflect the way time edits memories, Lancaster’s paintings are deeply personal, less distant, and more tender. As the objects of her memory become more obscure, her desire to hold onto them is all the more heartbreaking. She has composed a resonant elegy to a friend and a poignant simulation of the psychic loss that comes with the passage of time.
“Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster: Don’t Be a Stranger,” Trotter&Sholer, 168 Suffolk Street, Ground Floor, New York, NY. Through June 6, 2026.
