Five New York shows explore the pandemic’s effects two years after the city's first Covid-19 lockdowns
Unexpected, dreamlike surprises await in Stephen Thorpe’s so-called “corner paintings”. Portraits of interior corners that the artist developed during isolation, the works weave in strange, out-of-place elements like arcade games and Audubon-esque birds. The wall colours, carpets and room contents differ in each work, but there is a sense of familiarity connecting all the paintings, as if each one depicts the same vantage point constantly reimagined. Thorpe’s corners represent all of the interior views that became our habitats during lockdown. They also, as the exhibition title indicates, mark physical boundaries as spaces of safety but also entrapment. That may sound bleak, but Thorpe’s works also exemplify the unbound potential of our own imaginations.
