“Anxiety 2” at HVW8

A group show at HVW8 calls back to the gallery’s 2016 exhibition called “Anxiety,” hosted in the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Five years later, the exhibition proposes that art can serve as a vehicle that offers a salve for our collective unease. The gallery casts a wide net across contemporary life’s myriad stressors, explaining that “whether personal, political, economic, social, or geographical, it’s undeniably a strange moment on every macro and micro level.” Artist Elias Kafouros drops us into a dense interior, like a cross section of a doll house, filled with agitated lines and menacing characters swarming through the interior. These fantasies are rendered alongside the benign trappings of everyday life—an Amazon box, an exercise ball—suggesting the frenzied state of being stuck at home. This tension builds across the works on view, together building to mimic the din that has permeated our lived reality.

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Photo: “Anxiety 2” at HVW8 Gallery. Image courtesy of the artists and HVW8.