Xiao Wang: Seeing Through Wang’s hyperrealistic paintings depicting intimate social gatherings and sumptuous still lifes combine scenes of enjoyment with the sheer pleasure of looking, inviting audiences into immersive, dream-like worlds that offer voyeuristic and vicarious indulgence. Bold, geometric patterns, lush foliage, saturated colors, and glossy surfaces add to the visual grandeur of his canvases, further anchored by stylized displays of cut fruit, a succulent roast, cocktail shakers, and candlelight. While Wang sets the stage for a night of exuberant consumption, he carefully eschews from a bacchanalian-esque narrative. By offsetting the soothing and seductive with the strange and uncanny, his compositions appeal to maximalist desires while preventing a complete state of abandon. Alyssa Klauer: The Dreamers Alyssa Klauer’s vivid and layered works invite viewers into an ethereal world of color and meaning, where the boundaries between reality and dream, time and space, are blurred. The artist’s practice explores the concept of “Queer Time,” a term that speaks to the non-linear, often fragmented experiences of time felt by Queer individuals—particularly those who come out later in life, navigating a second adolescence of sorts. These works delve into the intimate yet collective understanding of time as fluid, personal, and deeply transformative. Through her use of oils and acrylics, Klauer captures this delicate passage, using vibrant hues and transparent layers that evoke a sense of spectral presence, as if the figures in her paintings are caught between moments, suspended in a liminal space of both self-discovery and self-affirmation.
New York City, NY; NYC