Flowing and Framing Two Exhibitions in New York Recall Arcs
The Editorial Team
July 31, 2024
Curator Lucy Liu’s Dream of Arches
The Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Romans used the arch to span and enclose space as a building and framing technique. The Ponte Molle (Pons Mulvius) built by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus in 109 B.C. in Rome, with seven arched spans, is still standing. For Arcus in-house Rachel Uffner staff member Lucy Liu unites the work of thirteen artists who use the storied arch as a framing device, or whose work includes domes or non-architectural but reminiscent circular or oval forms. Layering past and present styles, reality and myth, Angela Wei’s Fallen Angel painted in manga style depicts a putto donning cute trainers and a floral farmer’s bonnet falling, head-first, through the oculus (top center) of a renaissance-style dome, along with Cupid’s arrows. What brought on this scene, a summer break-up? It’s giving me a snapshot of the downfall of love. Unassumingly curious, Anne Buckwalter’s Three Stories gives us a detailed glimpse of a three-storied house, an arched window with a full moon crowning its top bedroom. The work’s flatness is interrupted by objects discarded on the floor, an open book, a soccer ball, a stray piece of paper, one boot–whose are they and what are they doing there? More poetic and eerie, Ronan Day-Lewis’s ghostly arch is part-architectural element part creature bulbous it stands in front of a carnival scene in dusky hues of purple and red. Taking a break from the summer heat in the airconditioned gallery I find myself imagining a wealth of storylines to go with these quizzical figurative works.
-Anna Mikaela Ekstrand
Arcus curated by Lucy Liu is on view at Rachel Uffner, New York through August 16.
