Exhibition: “Evade or Ensnare: Decorative Illusionism in Historic and Contemporary Painting”

Evade or Ensnare at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, September 22, 2022–January 8, 2023. Photography by Adrian Cubillas, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Installation view featuring works by Kukuli Velarde, Rembrandt Peale, and Didier William.

Evade or Ensnare, co-curated with Christiana Cruz-Council, was my final project as a Curatorial Fellow at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA).

This exhibition highlighted a selection of contemporary artists who use illusions to redirect the viewer’s gaze into an active form of looking. Evade or Ensnare brought these paintings into conversation with George Washington, Patriae Pater, completed around 1824 by Rembrandt Peale, to link contemporary concerns with transparency and opacity to earlier discussions on art, perception, and politics.

Illusionistic painting in the United States thrived in the early nineteenth century. As art historian Wendy Bellion has argued, discussions about illusionistic painting during this period linked political agency with skills in looking. By the time Peale painted George Washington, Patriae Pater, however, the functions of pictorial illusions were more diverse. Rather than providing an opportunity to test one’s keen perception, the masonry porthole and mourning cloth in this painting were meant to absorb the viewer in a miraculous scene of George Washington’s (1732–1799) resurrection. By evading attention, these decorative details focused the vision of spectators on the spiritual presence of the former president.

Like Peale, the contemporary artists featured in this exhibition—Hung Liu, Eamon Ore-Giron, Kukuli Velarde, Kehinde Wiley, and Didier William—use decorative elements, such as patterned textiles or ornamental friezes, to mediate different kinds of access. Instead of straightforward narratives or portraits, these five artists play with depth, repetition, and transparency to blur distinctions between figure and background. The resulting compositions trouble expectations of what will evade or ensnare the eye.