NinaJohnson

Shannon Cartier Lucy

February 29th, 2020

Ten years ago, this painter left New York and moved back to her native Nashville. Her first show since then features six bad-dream scenes, rendered with melancholic delicacy in a faded Kodachrome palette. The gallery’s close quarters heighten the air of claustrophobia in such works as “Naptime,” in which the contents of a bedroom—including a woman asleep on a bed—are seen wrapped in plastic, and “My Signature Act,” which captures the tension of a parlor trick (in which two hands play the piano while balancing a mug and a pencil), with the gloomy gravitas of a Rembrandt. The highlight of Lucy’s comeback is the creamily painted, crystalline image of goldfish whose bowl rests, alarmingly, on the lavender flame of a gas stove.

— Johanna Fateman

To visit the article, click here