“Patti Oleon: Coming Home” at SHRINE in New York City: Art Exhibition Review

I remember this place.

I think it’s asking me a question, but I can’t quite hear the voice. But I feel its atmosphere, its mist, seeping through my skin, filling the space before me, and making each point in this space feel physically full, occupied by both the seen and the unseen — the latter of which awaits and longs for a gaze.

And I’m gazing. I’m wondering. I think this place wants something from me. There’s a gravitational pull, pushing me forward, towards the door, towards the staircase, towards the podium, and towards the windows, outside of which I can see… nothing. But they’re waiting for me.

I find I’m supposed to be giving a speech; I’m meant to give… remarks. The words themselves, and the moment-by-moment passage of time that they delineate, fall away. There’s a path, but there’s no one on it. There’s nothing there.

But this place, it beckons. It draws, it envelops, and it washes: presence — the kind that sits entirely outside of us — as a wave.

In writing this, I think of the grandiosity of historical Christian religious art from European traditions with which I am somewhat familiar. I recently visited an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York City that showcased centuries-old painting from Siena, a place in Italy. Some of it was physically huge, and I saw some of it while immersed in large crowds (my visit was towards the end of the exhibition). It felt right. It felt magisterial. It was a place beyond.

I’d imagine the physical construction of these pieces approximated what seeing an angel must be like, should you believe in such a thing. The people who made and first viewed these artifices were trying to reach that.

The paintings by Patti Oleon in a new exhibition at the art gallery Shrine, which spurred all this contemplation, feel similar, though in a vastly different context. She paints quiet scenes of architectural interiors that loom, in each instance, as a mythic monolith. The images originate with real places that Oleon saw and visited, though she somewhat alters the imagery, reminiscent of how the memory of a place gets foggier on the periphery with time — or the potentially detailed perception of it is, in the moment, overshadowed by emotional weight that draws away some of our focus.

We’re present, but we don’t see it as it is. Perhaps we never can. We see and experience something instead more sweeping, creating portraiture of the space in our mind with each passing moment. We give the space its best rhetorical foot to put forward. The source for the grandiosity is us.

Centrally in each of the exhibited paintings, Oleon’s arranged imagery looks to be awaiting and activated by our gaze. In its holistic, encompassing, spatial contentment, in its inwardly driven sense of presence, in its gentility of reaching towards the person arriving, these environments are a character.

They are inherently, inescapably infused with our emotions. These physical spaces await, they mourn, they wonder, they welcome, and they cry. They watch, they comfort, and they make sure you feel the safety and the surrounding support to rest in quiet. They’re a friend, and they’re a loyal guardian.

And so these places and the space they contain, living alongside those who make them their home… even a temporary one… wait quietly, as I keep remembering.

I see the air quiver, the heat emanating through the windows and from a source I can’t even see, though I can feel it. I see expectation I don’t know if I can meet. I see myself leaving it in the past, that sense of past living right alongside me as I stand, wait, and wonder. The thing that frightens gives a helping hand. A belabored angel awaits, embodied in the walls, the floor, an open door with light I recognize and a wash of color that I think is quietly singing a hymn.

I think someone is waiting for me.

And I think this place remembers me.

Oleon’s exhibition continues at Shrine through March 15. It’s one of my favorite galleries, always offering a rich selection of surprising art.

Featured image: “Patti Oleon: Coming Home” (installation view), SHRINE, New York, January 31 – March 15, 2025. Image courtesy of SHRINE and the artist.