We Want To Believe In Impossible Things : Unit London

British contemporary artist Jess Allen returns to Unit for her second solo exhibition at the London gallery, We Want to Believe in Impossible Things. The enigmatic new series presents her most intimate exploration of her shadow figures to date, situating the psychoanalytic motif upon richly textured fabric backdrops that combine allusions to art history with bold contemporary colours. Amidst their many nuances, her works intentionally resist prescriptive interpretation, instead encouraging personal engagement and refl ection on the viewer’s part.
The shadows’ distorted and exaggerated poses (caused by rakish sunlight casting them over their uneven backgrounds) explores body language as a silent mode of communication, revealing how gesture and posture can immediately convey complex emotional states. Through her recurring use of the shadow figure, Allen experiments with a new mode of self-portraiture able to treat the silhouette as a distinct ‘other’ rather than a refl ection of the self.
Into the depths of her "shadow-selves", Allen pours the aspects of our identities we typically wish to keep hidden: our imperfect, vulnerable flaws. However, her paintings propose acceptance of these traits, rather than concealment, celebrating imperfection as vital to our humanity. This ethos resonates strongly within the exhibition’s feminist framework, reclaiming female representation from ideals of polish or perfection. While her fi gures are distinctly feminine, they transcend specifi c autobiographical narratives and become archetypal symbols, embodying the creative and nurturing forces inherent in womanhood. Allen’s work resists sexualization, instead positioning the female form as a vessel of strength and empathy. The exhibition’s title, We Want to Believe in Impossible Things, evokes our longing for idealised lives and unattainable dreams – a yearning tempered in Allen’s vision by the quiet beauty of acceptance. Her paintings become revelatory visual meditations on what it means to be seen, to feel, and to embrace imperfection as truth.