Eros is an In-Between

Eros Is An In-between is composed of works by 18 women and gender-nonconforming artists connected by their shared adoration of each other's studio practices. This chain of admiration forms an invisible thread held taut from one piece to another with a tension that transforms the distance between works into a performed act of longing—an elegiac meandering rhythm of an irregular heart.

Several works address Eros Is An In-between closely and from a distance. Nina Hartmann's past projects have drawn reference from quarter-century-old CIA documents documenting psychics used to gather information. "Man in FEMA Coffin", an elongated hexagram-shaped encaustic, pigment, toner printed wood panel, demonstrates the artist's interest in surveillance, showing a pale figure exiting a mysterious black corrugated container. A separate white hand enters the frame from the top left. The blurred graininess of the image behaves like a zoomed-in detail, hyperfocused on one area of a larger image. A thick, clean yellow line is a couple of inches inset from the hexagonal edges. It is the familiar yellow of American police tape, highway lane dividers; signs to slow down and take caution. The space between the USA's political left and right is currently full of contention and engulfed in flames, facing weaponized religion, surveillance, and media. Hartmann's work signals a broader, societally, and politically active Eros Is An In-between.

An oil painting by Aisling Hamrouge impeccably depicts a single, filled red wine glass on a slick black surface. Entering at the top of the composition is a profile with rouged lips and wisps of blonde hair pulled downward by gravity. A single drop of red liquid is suspended perfectly from the tip of their tongue. The droplet's distinctive warm red is more opaque than the deep rouge of wine, hinting at fresh blood. Hamrouge's paintings utilize the visual language of 80's and 90's horror films. Their seductive surrealist noir, alluring lighting, and heavy shadows will be familiar to fans of that cinematic period and even those old enough to remember the VHS cases and posters. Hamrouge's skillful, painstakingly astute oil painting technique transforms these images into unnerving contemporary masterpieces. There is an eerie absence in the lack of written or typographic elements to situate the horror imagery, and removed from that genre and the language of commercial advertising, her paintings become iconographic altarpieces signaling complex psychology. They bring the viewer to question why, as a culture, we find horror so irresistibly seductive.

Ang Ziqi Zhang's untitled painting queers Eros Is An In-between. Their work, consisting of two stacked panels with protruding raw wood framing, is a divider and conjoiner. The top panel's shadowy olive green bars and rosy backlit grids render an organic figure-eight on its side, creating a soothing, sensual rhythm. This motion continues in the bottom panel as more pointed diagonal and radial beams enter swirling luminescence. Two darker shadows frame and slice through the bottom composition, bringing the eye back towards the dancing figure-eight; the cycle of hypnotic motion repeats, morphs, and continues. Zhang's painting adopts the compositional in-between of a diptych, simultaneously shattering that binary split to reconstruct an image full of complexity.