and within the tightly framed isolation of each image. Perplexing distortions occur within each painting, however, articulating a space that the viewer cannot occupy; certain details are so pared down that the objects seem to read as artifice, architecture, or both.
Hung in thematic groups, Wada's canvases create environments that are both familiar and uncanny.
For his most recent exhibition, the gallery is divided in three parts. Facing the
viewer entering the gallery is a row of dumpsters, each teetering on a single wheel, their repetition
mirroring minimalist sculpture. Facing off in the same space are other elements that invoke a construction
site: a pair of paintings of port-o-potties, resting on the floor and represented in the lapidary glory of
their prefabricated precision. The second room contains the features of an urban laundromat. A row of Eames
like seats fills one of the walls, while a series of shiny aluminum washing machines progress across the opposite
wall with a similar rhythm. The third gallery comprises vents and garbage cans in their steel mesh bins,
as if seen on the façade of an apartment building in New York. The white gallery walls become the
front of an implied architecture of unknown proportions.
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