SETAREH is excited to announce our fourth solo exhibition of Jim Thorell, Angel Shots, at Schöneberger Ufer 71, Berlin. The exhibition takes place in correspondence with the 2025 Berlin Art Week. Angel Shots presents a new series of works in which Jim Thorell rethinks global ideologies through painting, such as capitalism versus degrowth. He excavates the underlying foundation of these structures through the use of forms, both breaking them down and developing them past their intended limits. With an expression that is legible as a language of its own, Thorell reveals that there is still so much to learn about the world as we know it.
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The title of the exhibition is inspired by a social practice of ordering an angel shot at a bar. Doing so conveys a secret cry for help to the bartender. In calling up a drink that doesn’t exist, Thorell uses the imagery of an angel shot to connect to other concepts - concepts that similarly do not have a physical body but function in our world all the same.
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Thorell describes angel shots as, “A shot of the water the angel made. Jam packed with growth in all its monstrous glory.” He uses angel shots as a shorthand. A quiet cry for something that carries a much bigger potential than its small container. In describing, “a shot made by an angel”, Thorell does only what an artist can – conjuring up a precise image loaded with connotations, with just a few words. The artworks in the exhibition operate in a similar way. Jam packed, exploding with colors and rich details, they become more than what their ‘container’ should seemingly allow.
Crucial chrysanthemum careerists 2025 Oil on canvas 200 x 150 cm | 78 3/4 x 59 in
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Aerial arterial artillery 2025 Oil on canvas 200 x 150 cm | 78 3/4 x 59 in
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Dually fascinated by the ideas of escapism and degrowth, Thorell engages with both, weaving this helix through the exhibition. On one hand, the illustrious paintings distract from all things outside of the picture. With this, they represent a tunnel for an escape. And through a chromadex of fantastical colors comes the fantasy of the works, its construction spell-binding and complex in equal parts. On the other hand, degrowth calls for the refusal of the wasteful by-products of capitalistic societies. Degrowth is not a recession, but a return to proper ‘form.’ Like Thorell’s paintings, we are greater than the potential our limited world seemingly allows, one where constant growth can be stifling instead of freeing.
Pineal pineapple protrution 2025
Oil on canvas 200 x 150 cm | 78 3/4 x 59 in
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In Jim Thorell’s new works, are we looking at a giant world from afar, or are we looking at a close-up image of a microcosm? While building the exhibited body of works, Thorell was inspired by Prometheus, in which an extra-terrestrial alien spawns the creation of man through the fertilization of a mountain brook. Angel Shots takes our ultra-globalized and progressive world and cycles back to the root of origin. Kaleidoscopic or – microscopic - spontaneous combustion. The fantasy in Thorell’s paintings is not a paradoxical expression of superfluity. But rather, the fantasy is for a world where less can be more. Like a gentle brook that creates new life, power can be found in things as small as a shot glass.
