Page 21 - WTP Vol. IX #2

Lulu With Her Friend, and Vice Versa
Intimacy and Embrace in Alex Kanevsky’s Work
What strikes me first is Lulu, alone.
What strikes me second is the materialization of the friend’s form in my visual field after being instructed by the title to look for it.
What strikes me third is how embarrassingly reminiscent the friend’s stature is to that of my own body slumped around my partner. Each night, distracted, he looks at his phone as I request a physical attention. Left leg leaning over right as gravity asks me to move closer to him. I close my eyes, which, as a chronic napper, I am prone to do. So easy to be lulled asleep here, a fetal position more complete by the warm body it engulfs. I fade out as the world held by my torso and thighs becomes the only thing happening.
Lulu: the only thing happening.
She—Lulu, of course, for how could the reflexive pronoun reliably refer back to a figure I keep having to remind myself is there—is in the middle of something. Hair tied in a cloth, she is getting ready, perhaps newly risen in this cool blue dawn, or sitting down for a brief respite in her morning routine. Such pale whiteness in her skin asks us to imagine an early sun, bright light with no orange tint. For Lulu, the day is beginning.
In this early hour, her world feels like a dream. The figures rest on what we, shy at the intimate nude em- brace, are apt to assume is a bed, though it is ill-defined in the context of a meadowy outdoors. The friend wrapped around her begins to seem imagined, discontinuous with a reality proposed in the top half of the painting.
Nameless in title and figureless in monochromaticity, the friend is shrouded in deep reds and browns, fad- ing into shadows. I am tempted, in speaking of her, to place her in the ‘background,’ though unarguably she is forward in frame. These colors, so separately blue and red, light and dark, cold and hot, pry these women apart, though the friend is empty without Lulu.
The friend’s furrowed brow suggests troubled sleep or barely-wakefulness, eyes closed to the lightness of Lulu against the sky. Lulu does not react, distracted or wholly at peace, to the discomfort of the body she drapes her arms over. Lulu fades in places, glitching into the colors of her friend. Eclipsed by the clouds and vice versa. The deep red floats up as peaches drop down, impossible to tell if darkness originated, or light.
Perhaps now we consider an autonomy of the Friend, where she is not shrouded by darkness but emanates it, an externalization of the world behind her heavy lids. Perhaps this new capital-F Friend imagines herself, manifests herself wrapped around a heavenly Lulu she once knew. Perhaps only the darkness is true here, though the lightness tempts our belief.
Now, embarrassingly again, I think of myself, alone. Night is well into its cycle when I shut off the lights and run to bed, nervous to turn from the door for too long. I land in bed and shudder, bring my knees to my chest, growing aware of the cavity between them. I grab a pillow, hold it close, pretend it is my partner who is many miles away. In the moments before sleep, my heart beats quickly though my eyes are closed. I fur- row my brow, I’m sure.
In the dark red light, I exist alone. I dream up something like Lulu.
Dauber is a writer and arts professional working as Registrar at Dolby Chad- wick Gallery. She is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley and enjoys painting and textile crafts in her free time. This is her first publication.
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