Julie Curtiss animates the nocturnal ballet of restaurant kitchens
The painter's new exhibition at Gagosian transforms the hidden world of aquarium tanks and hanging game into a luminous meditation on confinement and consumption, opening this November in New York.
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Julie Curtiss’s new paintings offer an unexpectedly tender reckoning with the backstage theatre of fine dining. In works such as “Grand Street,” the artist illuminates aquarium tanks crowded with fish, mussels and crabs, each creature suspended in a kaleidoscope of coloured light that transforms the kitchen into something between laboratory and cathedral. Above them, roasted ducks hang in the window like a memento mori, their golden bodies a counterpoint to the luminescent life below.
What emerges from these nocturnal scenes is a quiet visual argument about scale and stacking. The densely packed aquarium tanks recall high rise residential blocks viewed from above, each creature confined to its compartment as though part of some vast, intricate grid. Yet Curtiss renders this with neither accusation nor sentimentality. Her paint handling is tender and precise, allowing the play of light across surfaces to do the emotional work: the glow catching a shell edge here, throwing a fish’s eye into relief there, the neon pinks and greens of restaurant signage bleeding into the cooler tones of the water.
The exhibition “UNREAL” opens at Gagosian on Tuesday, November 10, with an opening reception from 6 to 8 in the evening. The gallery is located at 541 West 24th Street in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood.
Imagery courtesy of Gagosian (@gagosian).