Contributed by Will Maddoxx / At first, Fugue Gallery’s new Chinatown space seems like an apartment gallery or DIY space: the walls are brick, the windows are curtained, soft music plays on speakers, a few paintings and photographs hang on the wall. The works by the 16 artists in the inaugural show “Forbidden Fruit” are strong. The first to catch my eye was Justin Wood, an oil painter enamored with academic painting, chiaroscuro, and Baroque still lifes. His Purple Grapes recalls Rachel Ruysch’s work, rendered with immaculate technique. Rotting Apple, referential to Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit, expands upon his adoration for art history with perfect paint application. Alexa Huang’s Rehearsal for a Forgotten Tableau is pastoral and open, its paint handling not unlike Cecily Brown’s and its palette like that of a Tiepolo. Vincent Sachtler’s Comarum palustre is firmly contemporary – a mesmerizing moving light à la Dan Flavin and Olafur Eliasson.
