An immersive installation of light shades and globes.

[Full disclosure/Take this with a grain of salt: I’ll be showing at Interface Gallery next, and Hott and I share ties to Ortega y Gassett, an artist’s collective.]

Closing 2/1
Carrie Hott: After Hours
Interface Gallery, Oakland, CA

In After Hour, Carrie Hott employs a restrained set of materials: lamp shades and diffusers, textured gold paint, wobbly black cutouts (perhaps of MDF or wood), and curved cuts of polished metal. Hott combines these in modestly-scaled, floor- and wall-based sculptural assemblages. They are packed densely in the small, darkened space and lit with soft, blue-green lights. A soundtrack of glass pings in increasing frequency has a soothing effect while adding a sense of mystery. It is a pleasing physical environment—the textured gold catches and reflects teal glints as you move around. There is so much to navigate that surprising works and angles appear.

It’s dramatic to see an installation transform Interface Gallery’s compact space. After Hour creates an unfamiliar environment whose poetics unravel over time visually and spatially. In that way it made me recall Ola Vasiljeva’s Jargot at Art in General last year. Some of the shelf-based works read as landscapes, while others as a collection of objects, and when the objects seemed more discrete, Haim Steinbach came to mind. But Hott’s interest is unique—it’s is in electricity, light, and how both have changed human society. The Oakland sunshine outside seemed to be begging to be let in.