Morgan Lehman Gallery presents Parlor Games, a two-person exhibition of paintings by Fern Apfel and sculptures by Austin Ballard. The show is built on the idea that the most ordinary household things, kept long enough, become vessels for memory. Apfel’s paintings hang on the walls, while Ballard’s sculptures stand on pedestals in the room, so that the gallery resembles a parlor in which objects are gathered, handled, and displayed.
Apfel's new work takes cues from The Painter’s Cupboard (1769) by Antonio Pérez de Aguilar, the Mexican painter active from 1749 to 1769. Apfel’s own cupboard holds dice, dominoes, playing cards, and a lifetime’s accumulation of stamps, letters, and the pages of diaries and notebooks gathered from around the world.