Leon Aarts – 'Pupil' Self-Portrait (c. 2002, acrylics on paper)

A raw, almost forensic self-interrogation. The face looms like a storm cloud—half-formed, half-dissolved—against a feverish scribble of yellows and greens. This is not a mirror image but a psychic X-ray: Aarts drags pigment across the paper as if trying to scrape the self out of the skull. 

This is the sound of an artist breaking open. Less a portrait than an exorcism, it captures the exact moment self-regard curdles into self-reckoning. In the arc of Aarts’ 2002 output, it is the hinge: everything before was mask-making; everything after is geology and cosmos. Hang it low, under a harsh bulb, and watch visitors step back involuntarily.

Score (out of 10): 8.7 A small, savage miracle—Francis Bacon in a tropical fever dream, rendered on the back of an envelope.