The Inside Out

The 18th Century German concept of Innerlichkeit (inwardness) characterized an intentional distancing from the external world. The French intimists of the 19th century, including Pierre Bonnard, similarly emphasized the everyday and the banal, enriched by decorative and embellished surroundings. The resulting subjects are often imbued with a sense of autonomy that suggests the viewer is an intruder from the outside, at times welcome or interrupting. Meanwhile, artists have considered the physical manifestation of internal conditions as well as performative ideals about the body, in which taboos are normalized when the personal is forced into the open. The Inside Out explores these ideas through various subjects, as well as through composition and technique, raising interesting questions about our occupation of space, and how we define internal and external environments with one another and with ourselves.

The painting painting 57 East 66th Street Street, New York Home of Andy Warhol (2018) by Enoc Perez is based on a photograph of the American Pop artist's bathroom cabinet taken by David Gamble. Perez's painting honors and distorts the impeccable details of the photograph, which displays various prescription drugs, ointments and hygienic products in a mirrored cabinet with glass shelves. The painting is a unique and visually alluring portrait of Warhol himself, whose protection over his private life concealed his obsessions with beauty and hoarding.

In Night Sky Loft (1973) by Lois Dodd, an arrangement of objects allows a complicated view of interior and exterior space, aligning the view out of a window with a reverse view in the reflection of a mirror. In the evening painting, Dodd interprets the backlit apartments outside her studio in individual squares of white, yellow and blue, the window acting as a reminder of the distance between the interior and the exterior world.