Go to the hamlet of Wassaic, N.Y., climb to the top of the Maxon Mills, the home of year-round artist colony The Wassaic Project, up seven flights of stairs showcasing the summer exhibition titled “Counting the Seconds Between Lightning and Thunder” and you will be thoroughly rewarded. Danielle Klebes, a young painter from North Adams, Mass., who also works as The Wassaic Project’s programming coordinator, has created something exceptional for the area in her fully immersive installation piece, aptly titled, “Seventh Floor Walk-Up.”
In an artist statement, Klebes describes her inspiration coming from a weekend rental at a “colorful man-cave.” “I felt an inexplicable sense of ownership and pride for that apartment. There was something so funny to me about a queer female and her queer friends existing in that stereotypically masculine space.”
On view through Sept. 16, Klebes recreates the convivial scene of lounging twenty-somethings in a three-dimensional optical illusion, with painted wooden cut-outs that imbue the room with a frenzied, live-in sense of clutter. Following the path of pop singers like Lana Del Rey or Ethel Cain, the friction between east coast indie sleaze and the iconography of working-class Americana melds into a poetic harmony as Klebes’ wry humor marries gas station Coors Light with alt-girl summer. Animal skulls and mounted deer heads hang as wall decor next to a vanity license plate that reads “ASSMAN,” but look to the bookshelf and you’ll find more sensitive book club reading, like Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest And Relaxation” and Michelle Zauner’s memoir “Crying in H Mart.” Vintage copies of Playboy are stacked next to the dizzying graphics of microbrewery IPA cans.
In her soft yet saturated palette, Klebes tenderly depicts her gang of bright-eyed individuals, tattoos across their warm skin, dark thrifted clothing wrinkled and paint-splattered. In her inviting world is the spirit of play and curiosity, as well as surprising pangs of emotional storytelling — the connection of friendship, and the way the strangest of trips, in the unlikeliest spots, takes on a real-time daydream nostalgia when you’re sparking up with your buds over a beer.
Photo by Alexander Wilburn
Photo by Alexander Wilburn
Photo by Alexander Wilburn
Photo by Alexander Wilburn
