Renee So @ Kate Macgarry

Renee So’s third solo exhibition comprises new tapestries and ceramics. Repeated motifs such as disconnected limbs, the spherical curls of Assyrian beards and lit cigarettes play across both tapestries and ceramics. The ceramic elephants’ feet, anthropomorphic cocktail glasses and giant cigarettes are suggestive of dream logic, the golden age of American advertising and upturned moments of leisure.
The tapestries are defiantly simple and beguiling. Draped legs and smoking cigarettes recall the cocktail hour of the ceramics and suggest twilight worlds of frittered hours or quiet moments of contemplation. The zone described by Luis Buñuel of “tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries.” Together these curious containers and mute tapestries construct notions of displacement, whimsy and imploding narrative.