House & Ghosts

Hashimoto Contemporary is excited to present House Ghosts, the debut solo exhibition by Iowa-based artist Angela Fang Zirbes. Set within the backdrop of an old rural house, ghosts appear within carefully decorated wood paneled interiors. Executed in a monochromatic palette, the paintings are reminiscent of vintage photographs, like calling upon a forgotten memory. Inspired by common decor typically found within old country homes, faux wooden frames encase relics and imagined memories of a life once lived, serving as memories of the ghosts past 'in life'. These domestic depictions illustrate the restrictions of life through the use of traditional compositions, smaller scale imagery, and rigid posture. By contrast, the second group of works depict ghosts and their haunted objects appearing within uncanny interiors with unusual cropping and oversized subjects. Here the figures appear weightless and soft, untethered to the restrictions of a life once lived. Isolation serves as the ghostly figure's ultimate freedom. Free of societal expectations, they do not acknowledge the viewer, uninterested as they no longer abide by the rules of the living – instead ruminating on past memories and events. The paintings serve as a representation of how the apparitions feel larger in death than in the life they lived when ‘in frame’. While free, the ghosts are ultimately confined to what they knew and experienced in their previous life, trapped inside the very house they haunt. This body of work reflects the isolating experience of navigating an identity rooted in liminality as a biracial person -- caught between realities, both real and imagined. The ghosts in these works echo this in-between state, neither fully belonging to the world they haunt or the one they left behind. These paintings explore the tension between belonging and estrangement, presenting a haunted landscape that is both personal and political, reckoning with the myths of American identity and the uncertain realities that lurk beneath. Angela Fang Zirbes (b. 2000) is a painter based in New York and Iowa. Her paintings recall feelings of isolation growing up as a biracial woman in the American Midwest. Working from a range of sources including her memories, recurring dreams, and found imagery, Fang Zirbes' paintings describe the experience of navigating an identity rooted in liminality through layered contradictions: what is seen and what is hidden, light and shadow, and reality versus memory. Set in an old rural house reminiscent of the spaces from her childhood, repeated motifs coexist alongside the artist as familiar objects, patterns, and entities in subtly altered forms and contexts. The skewed compositions and perspectives suspend a pervasive sense of peril within the uncanny interiors, in which the subjects are aware that they have been walked-in-on by an unwelcome voyeur. Fang Zirbes' paintings return her to haunt these domestic scenes, seeking a deeper understanding of her detachment, uncertainty, and fear.