Deep in her imagination, painter Alexis Trice dreams of a canine that keeps appearing in her art. “One day,” she responded when I asked her if she has such a borzoi in her life or longs to own one.
The New York City native has mounted an impressively tender exhibition of paintings on canvas, panel, and shells as part of Miami gallery KDR’s residency in the narrow Long Story Short gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Deep Sea, Swallow Me is a fairy tale-inflected world of sentimentality and memory. Trice powerfully uses the metaphor of the pearl, which slowly forms in mollusks around an intruding irritant, to create an effect in which these scenes appear to secrete their own light. Her use of Old Master techniques, including an imprimatura layer, followed by a layer of grisaille, and then many glazes of color around what feels like a distant memory of pain or longing, generates these luminous images. Strong foregrounded focal points are framed by misty scenes often dominated by seascapes with low horizon lines.
The exhibition’s namesake painting, though labeled as the slightly longer “Deep Sea, Deep Sea, Swallow Me” (2024), comes from Trice’s loving rereading of Moby Dick. The velvety, aged sea mammal’s aquatic performance also echoes the artist’s love of fountains and waterfalls, which we see in her other works. Time permeates each inch of these portrayals, while elements like candles, tears, and tongues suggest her passion for movement, time, and touch.
Trice’s art is lyrical, illustrative, and emotional. Like so much of the best painting being produced today, it casts its meaning just beyond our grasp in fertile soil that sprouts associations of all kinds.
There’s something cathartic and mystical about her work, as she surfaces an essence deep below and finds power in that fishing expedition. Or, as Herman Melville’s narrator says in his masterwork, “Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.”
Deep Sea, Swallow Me continues at KDR gallery’s residency at Long Story Short Gallery (54E Henry Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through March 9. The exhibition was curated by Katia David Rosenthal.
