This Painting In The PAFA Student Show Is A Very Big Junior Year Of COVID Mood
BY JOEY SWEENEY | The PAFA Annual Student Exhibition is up now, and what’s nice about this — other than the show always being a pretty notable one among student shows period — is that this year, we’re all juniors. Juniors at the school of pandemic living, that is. The name of this painting by Gabrielle Dobrzelewski is "Death is Going into the Water and Life is the Coming Out," and our experience says that this tracks. Who among us has not been this lady in the water? God, who among us is not this lady in the water right now?
We are finding out — whether it’s via the Whitney Biennal or your friend’s band — that art has a great many things to say about these last few years, and that’s going to be equal parts wonderful and dreadful. The best of it, we think, is going to reflect the set of emotions that dominates like at least half of every week now. If that’s true, Gabrielle Dobrzelewski just saw so many of us.
