This is the best show at Sadie Coles HQ since Steven Claydon's Lacrimosa. The modelling / carving dynamic which proposes a forking of paths for sculpture - whether the form is uncovered through carving, removing, etc (as if it always lurked there latently) or is built-up by repeated adding extra bits. This dynamic is played out in these paintings of Damien’s reinforcing the uncertainty we feel as we look and try to familiarise ourselves with them - past, present and possible future.

One of the heads flickers with a ghost of Giuseppe Sanmartino’s Christ in Sansevero, Naples - an infrathin diaphanous membrane veiling its features implying a careful excavation of a form, stopping a fraction before complete revelation. The figure is neither revealed nor concealed. Contrast this with the spindly ’S’-shaped torsos and thighs which feel like their clay bodies have been squeezed in a fist.

Painting cannot offer the carving / modelling distinction at its inception - something must always be accreted in order to be scraped back. But Damien repeatedly makes us look at painting as if we were looking at sculpture - although we are always entirely aware that we aren’t. His category-confusion (for us viewers) suggests that there is a thing inside (note the closed eyes) even if that inside is more dark matter than matter.

Thinking about Steve Claydon… his grenade-like vessels are potent too. Possibly containing tea, tears or explosives, their outer form is a strange meeting of aesthetic finesse and utilitarian expedience.

Latency, dormancy, potency… it’s all about what is inside, which might eventually - traumatically, catastrophically, cathartically - become outside.