July 24, 2024
How fascinating it was to engage with the jaw-dropping investigations of American culture @inaarcher brings to her artistic practice at @microscope_gallery . Archer’s absolutely riveting aesthetic analysis comes through her paintings, collages, film projections and video installations in the gallery’s current “Ina Archer: To Deceive the Eye” exhibition running through July 27. It’s a lesson in the insidiously dangerous proposition of American identity through pop tropes and children’s toys, especially on the level of race and gender. But Archer doesn’t lecture, not at all! Instead she teases her viewers into coming to our own revelations, as in this trompe l’oeil of somatic trickery where can-can dancers of one race transform into another, presenting joy and deception in one entertaining kick after another. Equally troubling and astonishing are Archer’s delicate watercolors of topsy-turvy, black/white dolls that transform as one girl’s skirt opens to reveal another girl, one lost, one found, never the same in a single manual embrace. Plan to spend some time in this small space in Chelsea. There’s so much to discover.