Location: 2277 Monitor Street, Dallas, Texas, 75207
Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce The Space Between Pearls and Stars, an upcoming solo
exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Samantha McCurdy. This marks the artist’s fifth solo show with
the gallery. Join us for the opening reception on April 15th, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., to meet the artist.
The event coincides with the Second Annual Design + Art on Monitor Street Block Party, which runs
from 5:00 to 8:30 p.m.
An essay by Eve Hill-Agnus accompanies this exhibition:
In Samantha McCurdy’s multivalent practice, forms that could be seen as simple—elemental, minimal—
bring us to places that are intuitive, deeply human, profound.
Her exhibition The Space Between Pearls and Stars extends just such a powerful invitation into broad
and subtle territory. The title derives from a smaller work made several years ago—a modest row of
eight-by-four-inch pieces, in which McCurdy introduced pearlescent color into her practice. The phrase
has stayed with her, gathering meaning. “Pearls are the ocean and stars are the sky,” she says, “and our
existence is in between—depth on either side.” For this exhibition, she has returned to the namesake
piece, at larger scale: a row of six forms fitted together, sharing a pearlescent sheen but each
harboring its own hue—lilac, red, blue, yellow, a minty green. Viewed head-on, the work resolves into
white; only as the viewer moves and light shifts across the surfaces does their iridescent individuality
stand out. The phenomenon is evanescent and conditional—it depends on position, on angle, on the
willingness to look from somewhere other than straight ahead.
Such conditionality is integral to McCurdy’s formal thinking. She has long worked in wood, canvas, and
latex, building forms that protrude from or recess into the picture plane, playing with depth of field. A
series of hollow pieces debuting here take that further. Mysterious, they confound our perception even
as they spark imagination. The interior is simply unavailable.
McCurdy thinks in terms of landscape: many of her multi-panel works evoke a horizon line, that
elemental division of land, sea, and sky, depth and expanse. But also in terms of personhood.
The abstract shapes of her compositions have human stories behind them or “a way of looking at
something in the world.” A two-panel work born from watching two people embracing as she bought
coffee, for instance; another prompted by the sight of someone stacking wood, or trash: the myriad
ways bodies and objects come together in relation to each other. “People are always going to be my
favorite topic,” she says. “It’s infinite. One of the only mysteries left that can’t be scientifically defined.”
The iridescent palette amplifies this. Pearl and metallic finishes force scrutiny despite their
etherealness. The most elusive surfaces require the most rigorous attention. Which is also, in the end,
an act and proof of faith in the viewer. The Space Between Pearls and Stars is, among other things, an
account of that relationship. In her practice, McCurdy gives us a glimpse of the secret lives of objects.
Pearls in the ocean. Stars in the sky. We, somewhere in between.
