Deluxe Setting 1992

Curator: Howard Arkley painted this scene, titled Deluxe Setting, back in 1992. The acrylic-paint rendering creates a space that feels simultaneously familiar and totally artificial. Editor: It's definitely jarring! That intense color palette feels almost aggressively cheerful, like forced optimism. And everything's fighting for attention - those clashing patterns, the lurid furniture... It's maximalism on overdrive! Curator: The work is exemplary of Arkley’s unique blend of pop and surrealist sensibilities combined with elements of graffiti art and postmodern irony. Note how each visual component – the sofa, tables, wall decorations - is delineated with crisp black outlines, as though each has been carefully isolated and reassembled. Editor: Absolutely! Each object is so deliberately outlined it's like they're cutouts. What’s most arresting is the repetition, or the structural use of ornamental excess. And how the geometric lines in the patterned carpets draw your eye through to the focal point on the top right, which appears to be the artwork above the sofa – where the hard-edged aesthetic momentarily dissolves! It almost reminds me of Derrida and deconstruction. The effect overall is of space, endlessly recursive and in conflict with itself. Curator: That's an interesting perspective. For me, it almost suggests something akin to a stage set, where familiar props stand-in for real lived experience. You feel both at home, surrounded by everyday objects and comfort, and completely removed, in some stylized recreation of a life. What's "deluxe" about this setting anyway? What is he suggesting with that title? Editor: Perhaps he's pointing out the artificiality inherent in our ideas about "luxury" and "comfort." Look at how carefully crafted and unreal it is. He shows it but seems also to question if it’s deluxe at all! I'm drawn to that painting on the wall—it seems to mirror how staged and constructed his perspective is within the scene. He has painted a vision inside his vision! Curator: Agreed. This painting has stayed with me in unexpected ways, pushing me to consider what "home" truly signifies, what layers of identity, longing and illusion shape how we envision those safe, familiar spaces. Editor: I couldn’t agree more – it prompts us to think of what our idea of "comfort" is as we sit here together within this "deluxe" space!