Lisa Edelstein: Dance Me To The End Of The World

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Lisa Edelstein: DANCE ME TO THE END OF THE WORLD, an exhibition of new watercolor paintings and the artist’s first at the gallery. Edelstein mines her own family history in works that transform vintage photographs into compositions that acutely capture the color and texture of a particular moment in time. The images are candid, the figures largely unposed and caught off-guard, implying action on either side of the frozen moment depicted. Edelstein’s interest in storytelling arises across the various avenues of her artistic practice, including painting, writing, and acting. The title of the exhibition references the Leonard Cohen classic whose instrumentation evokes traditional Jewish klezmer music. The song shares a cultural pride and dark sweet sadness with Edelstein’s paintings.

Edelstein’s interest in storytelling arises across the various avenues of her artistic practice, including painting, writing, and acting. The story that weaves throughout Dance Me to the End of the World is the artist’s own, her compositions populated by cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents in various domestic settings. The cumulative effect gives a sense of a boisterous and interconnected family enjoying the fruits of mid-century American success. Yet the paintings also convey a more universal sense of family — the figures feel familiar and known, almost intrusively personal yet widely relatable. Edelstein captures the complex, perennial dynamics between family and friends and of subjecting oneself to the camera’s gaze.

Dance Me to the End of the World gives a distinct sense of Edelstein’s suburban New Jersey childhood, full of 1970s interiors and intergenerational gatherings. The work is strongly rooted in Jewish memory and identity at a moment when both are politically precarious. Edelstein proudly claims her own heritage by leaning into the symbols of Jewishness, such as the shiny braided challah on the celebratory table in Rites. This work also emphasizes the photographic roots of the material in its square format and emphatically candid staging.

In the largest painting in the exhibition, Twister, a group of young teens play the iconic game, all lined up and awaiting the next spin. The bold plaids and stripes of their clothing set against the strong grain of the wood-paneled walls firmly locate this scene in the 1970s, perhaps in the family’s finished basement. The figures engage with the game yet each maintains the distinct interiority that blossoms in early adulthood. Edelstein’s watercolor method produces rich, saturated tones that seem to hold light within the color – the rosy cheeks of the figures reflect the same glow that bounces off the lacquered wood paneling.

Edelstein’s paintings are deeply rooted in the Jewish diasporic experience of growing up within a multigenerational family whose elders fled violence and discrimination to find success in the new world. The lush surroundings of these paintings – designed interiors, new cars, dance lessons – signal a flourishing made possible by this new start in America, while also firmly rejecting the deprivations of wartime Europe that hover in the recent past. This immigrant success story suffuses the paintings, from the proud stance of the couple in Day Trip to the beach vacation in Cruising.

The paintings maintain the feel of a snapshot throughout, mimicking the scale and shape of the scrapbook down to the square polaroid and oval-cut portrait. Edelstein’s watercolor medium perfectly suits the soft lines and haze of memory that characterize old photographs. Moments gain new meaning in translation, as details reveal themselves through close observation and magnification. These works transport the viewer to a different time, and are filled with tenderness towards the jumble of personalities and physical spaces that bring a family to life.