Bringing together multiple and seemingly contradictory art historical references, “Sheets” is a painting that revels in the inherent ambiguity of the mutually dependent relationship between desire and death. This fragment of a reclining body is half-covered in white sheets as a hand reaches out to touch the chest, and as such it is at once reminiscent of scenes depicting Christ’s lamentation as a Western painterly motif, Muslim burial rituals’ covering of the body in white cotton cloth, and the recurring art historical motif of the reclining nude. Typically reserved to depictions of the female body in its associations with eroticism and fertility, male reclining nudes in the classical sense rather emphasize the athleticism of the masculine ideal. Doganoglu reverses these terms by depicting a male nude imbued with sensuality. Spilling beyond the confines of the canvas, endowed with an erotic power that lingers, the movement between fragments depicted here partakes in an undeniable expression of desire to touch and be touched. While we can not be certain whether the hand belongs to the owner of the body or to someone else, and even through the auto-erotic connotations of touching oneself, the yearning for another’s skin, to experience one’s own flesh through another’s desire and touch is present here, along with the bittersweet pain of absence and the tragedy of mourning a loved one.