Life is short, and life is sweet. Artist Kara Walker reminds us of the beauty and ephemerality of life and its comforts as we know them today with her show “A Subtlety,” also known as the “Marvelous Sugar Baby,” a sculptural installation inside the Domino Sugar Factory produced by Creative Time. The exhibition opened this past weekend, coinciding with Frieze New York.
Walking into the Domino Sugar Factory is a delightful experience on its own. Not many structures boast the charm and history of a warehouse built in 1882, when it was the largest sugar refinery in the world. There are stairs and ladders that lead to large doors that go nowhere, odd windows and holes that must have opened up to something at some time, and colors that can only be formed by rust, age, and a beautiful decay. The dark atmosphere welcomes beams of natural light that pour in from skylights and large windows that sometimes host purple or yellow glass panels. There’s a strong and unmistakable saccharine scent that fills the air before you even turn the corner into the space, already awarding viewers with a childlike sense of wonder that has been so lost from our lives for such a long time.
