Sertraline

Workplace is pleased to present Sertraline, a new body of paintings by Wang Pei that explore how emotion and identity are shaped under pressure.

Borrowing its title from a widely prescribed antidepressant, the exhibition reflects on what happens when feelings are named, managed, and standardised. Rather than directly referring to medicine, the works ask how we experience emotion in a world where it is increasingly regulated.

Many of the paintings depict figures turned away from the viewer: the nape of a neck above a cotton collar, a back receding into a dark ground, shoulders contained within the sheen of a silk dress. With expression withheld, attention shifts to posture, micro-gestures, and to surfaces that mediate between the interior and exterior. Here clothing carries a psychic weight; surfaces held together, pressed smooth and hinting at tension beneath, which is constantly withheld.

At a time when numbness becomes the path of least resistance, Sertraline insists on the importance of feeling. Through attention to surface, material, and pause, the paintings invite viewers to reconnect with the complexity and weight of emotion.