Pillars of Salt is Kelsa Kuchera’s second solo show in New York. In her newest body of work she features different entertainers, from actors to muppets, each exemplifying variations of melancholy, grief, and loss.  A forced smile here, a sob of relief there, a technicolor memory that seems far away by now, the characters of each painting are captured for a brief moment. Kuchera winks at you through the pieces, reminding us of the complex nature of emotions, like a laugh at a funeral.  

The artist uses classical techniques in her application of oil paints, enjoying a push and pull, with moments of both refinement and loose exuberance that add interest as the viewer meets the eye of the subject and then travels outwards.  In taking these ultra contemporary internet references from the smallest screen to large-scale oil paintings, she shows reverence for the “now", instead of feeding into an idolization of the past. 

Pillars of Salt asks us, in both concept and execution, is it as important today to live in the moment, focus on the present, and shed the grief endured in a life well-lived, as it was to Lot’s Wife in the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The woman who turned around to look backwards at a life that is no longer. The woman frozen in her reminiscence, turning into a pillar of salt, damned to keep looking forever.  A woman with no name, because she is all of us.