Michael Bauer offers deformity as a platform for unequivocal beauty by using the qualities of abstract painting as a deviation of representational portraiture. Traces of recognisable features, such as eyes and hands give uneasy relation to smears, scabby encrustations, and fluid brush marks, each rendered with a pristine delicacy. Offset by harlequin ornamentation and elegant touches of primavera colour, Bauer’s reductive palette creates an antiquarian reverence, setting his absurd conception as an icon of protracted contemplation.