The work of Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles) engages the fluid definitions of reality and fiction of our contemporary world. In Knot Eye, her exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, Kingly Street, Syms slips between genres, modes of representation and narrative-threads, with two new films and a concept store.

The exhibition presents RW-LO, 2026, which will have its theatrical premiere at the New York Film Festival in September. In the 22-minute docu-fantasy, set in the Garden District of New Orleans in the year 2000, Syms blends reenactments with home movies from the life of Brent David Freaney, a lifelong pop girlie, who was once, as vintage camcorder footage reveals, a Deep South teenager obsessed with outspoken Real World New Orleans castmate Melissa Howard. RW-LO is a nostalgic — and surprising — inquiry into what happens when people start being celebrities, and they stop being real.

The exhibition also premieres her film Ex Voto, 2026, a three-handed ensemble set in a New York apartment.…