Fictional Exhibition For several years, the painter’s relatives and friends have continually entered her paintings. Of these oil paintings, her younger brother comes out particularly well. He has cheeks the texture of well- brewed linseed oil, aptly symbolizing the painter’s habits of mixing oils. Due to her generous use of paint, the canvas supports a gentle surface tension; her brother’s mesh-like crew cut, like that of a soldier, shading the skin on the top of the head a faint grey. Some may also find this texture similar to a cicada wing’s, blending fittingly into the flesh tones of her portraits. At the opening of her solo exhibition this year, her younger brother, appeared in the flesh. He, now stands in front of me, seems to have lost weight. But I have no way of telling if the image now held in my memory originates from her older paintings which I know so well, or from occasional glimpses of his figure within a crowd at one of her several past exhibition openings. Browsing through new paintings of her younger brother, their impressions would slide around, leaving me feeling even more unravelled. On this occasion, a particular feeling gradually emerges about this younger brother, this younger brother who I can’t help but stare at, no matter how rudely. The way he can so effortlessly stir up your attention is sufficient to know that in your own eyes, this younger brother possesses much more than the ordinary appearance of a flattering friend, (re-consulting your memory, the image of his cheeks the texture of well-brewed linseed oil can’t be wrong; but the cheeks you see now before you, sallow and slightly pockmarked, are nonetheless real.) So, his particular aura probably comes from the photographic qualities of one of his sister’s paintings. It’s not difficult to imagine that an impression which accumulates over several exhibitions will eventually ferment, by itself creating the effect of tabloid papers, within a small circle. Ever since the painter’s second year at college, when the first portrait she hung gained the unanimous praise and respect of tutors in the college (It was actually two portraits, one enclosed within the other, faint streaks of red on her younger brother’s cheeks, on either side of him in perfect symmetry the faint feeling of sideways motion. The appearance of movement, yet also seeming as if completely still.), her friends started to circulate portraits of her rosy-cheeked, still not twenty younger brother amongst themselves. These biographical portraits would then constantly depict her brother, even without written words. It easily commands the attention of its readers,