O-1 Visas
Let’s take seriously the title of Pedro Albertini Guerra’s exhibit at Fabulous, a gallery housed in a bathroom in an apartment in Wicker Park. “In light of recent events” attains the particular brilliance only a non-native speaker can approach, by not taking English idioms for granted, and thereby forcing that position on those of us who do. Is Albertini suggesting a literal or figurative understanding, or perhaps a misunderstanding? Maybe all of the above. The show consists of a single sculpture, larger than a brick but smaller than a concrete block, cast from translucent ballistic gelatin, in which are suspended two flies, very close but not touching, lit by a tiny, embedded LED. The illuminated gelatin resembles amber, the flies romantic in their suspended dance. Everything always looks beautiful trapped in fossilized resin, no matter how dead; indeed, the deader the better. But this isn’t amber, it’s the weird stuff that gun enthusiasts shoot at in order to gauge how their bullets will travel through human or animal tissue. Plus it’s unstable, bending under its own weight and susceptible to ambient heat and humidity. No one’s going to shoot a fly, but a philosopher might try rhetorically, and why not two at once? This couple will never hit the ground.
For those who notice, a few bonus artworks round out the show. A second gelatin prism, filled with a swarm of flies, glows by daylight in the kitchen window, disgust made pretty as a pastry. A pair of small photographs encased in shallow gelatin-filled boxes, clipped from an old magazine and depicting a depressed housewife laid out in a hospital bed, tuck into an alcove above the bathroom door. Resisting the temptation to draw a connection between dead insects and disconsolate women feels like the least one can do.
—Lori Waxman 9/6/26 10:39 AM