The bodies that Laura Mercedes Arndt brings together on her canvases are robust and impressive in their stature, almost sculptural. Yet their colour and texture remain soft, the skin earthy and warm, a blend of delicate pinks and browns. Naked, save for simple white underwear, they reveal an intimate, vulnerable, yet innocently playful side.

Despite their nudity in the midst of the body hubbub, there is no erotic con-notation. Instead, their physical similarity to one another stands out. By replicating and varying the same figure—sometimes with long hair, sometimes with a short haircut—the artist deftly avoids any clear attrib-ution of sexual identity. At the heart of the painting lies the quiet strength that emanates from these fig-ures. Each body is distinctly outlined, yet there is a palpable yearning in the air to transcend solitude, to merge into a collective body, to connect and fuse into a unified whole.