By 
Friends Indeed Gallery and Rebecca Camacho Presents will stage a dual venue exhibition of new paintings by Philadelphia based artist Anne Buckwalter. This represents the first solo West Coast show for the emerging painter recently highlighted by the New York Times’ art critic, Roberta Smith. Inspired by the culture and folk-art traditions of her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, Buckwalter’s intricately detailed, small scaled domestic spaces serve as a framework to explore themes of gender identity, intimacy, and the body.
Exposing the contradictions, pluralities and dualities coexisting in one orderly space, Buckwalter allows for things that are often perceived as disparate to live harmoniously together – documenting elements that suggest a wholesome, conservative household alongside elements alluding to sexuality, eroticism, and female hygiene. Titled “Two Story House,” the exhibition, on view June 25 – July 30, emphasizes duality.
Structured in a split-level home, Buckwalter’s paintings delve into doubles, pairs, opposites, and other twosomes. Either technically, in Red Room and Dollhouse where the compositions are bisected into two equal spaces, conceptually, in Rainforest Documentary where the tonal temperature shifts from the warm jungle to an austere winter landscape, or literally in Five O’Clock News or View from the Backyard where bodies sensually embrace, the works create nuanced environmental duplicity.
Throughout the exhibition figures and personal effects appear and reappear painting to painting, lending an atmosphere of familiarity to the home. A red glove casually discarded in one setting is seen again in another. A singularly featured alarm clock is observed anew in a larger midst, one element in an ongoing dialogue. The ease and recognizability of Buckwalter’s environments concede an intimacy that is both exciting and awkward. Shifting perspective between voyeur and participant, interior and exterior, the viewer is in continuous proximity to quiet, private moments of comfort and titillation.
About the Artist
Anne Buckwalter (b. 1987, Lancaster PA) received her BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2010, and her MFA from Maine College of Art in 2012. She was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in 2016 and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2021.
Buckwalter has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta Canada; Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Lovell ME; Galveston Artist Residency, Galveston TX; and the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson VT.
In summer 2022, Buckwalter will be an artist-in-resident at MassMoCA, North Adams MA.
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