There’s a funereal feeling to Cathy Wilkes’ show, currently installed at contemporary art gallery Yale Union. Wilkes required Yale Union to cover their enormous, west-facing windows for the show’s duration. Not only does this block any light and breeze these windows may have provided, it creates the shape of great white tombstones, visible both indoors and out.
Due to the heat of summer, the gallery’s rarely noticed atrium windows have been opened. Curator Hope Svenson explains this is to keep the space cool despite Wilkes’ desired closed-in feeling. If you’re wondering why the gallery would go to such lengths to accommodate an artist, you may not appreciate the scale of the Irish artist’s international prestige. Next year, some of the pieces from this show will represent the UK in the 2019 Venice Biennale, which is just about the most prestigious contemporary art exhibition in the world.
