‘Lover’s Knot’ By Anne Buckwalter At Uffner Liu
By Tom Teicholz. Published Oct 11, 2025.
Whenever I go to New York, I am always interested to see what Uffner Liu is showing. It was there that I first saw the work of Hilary Pecis, and it was at their hotel/room booth at Felix two years ago that I first saw the work for Talia Levit, who I understand is doing a major commission for the reopening of The Jewish Museum in New York.
Currently, Uffner Liu is exhibiting Lover’s Knot by Anne Buckwalter, her third solo show at the Gallery. It is a show that is by turns pleasing, clever, and funny.
Buckwalter, by her own account, creates work at “the intersection of sexuality and domestic life.” Her work features detailed interiors painted in a colorful but flat, almost decorative, manner that calls out to her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. The show’s title is actually a reference to a traditional quilt pattern. But in Buckwalter’s work it takes on the additional meaning of lovers entwined.
In this way, her work can be seen to share with Pecis a similar aesthetic of domestic scenes with bright colors, where the canvases contain clues to the references in her work, and the visual problems she is solving. However, although the same could be said of Buckwalter’s work, the jokes are different.
In Buckwalter’s works, there is a sly comic erotic element of couples in flagrante, or sneaking off for a tryst or spied through a window. These figures appear almost cartoon-like, like the marginalia in a high school notebook, but they are so wonderfully naked and vital.
The attention to detail is meticulous. At times, the sexual references are hidden only to be found by observing closely the items in the room: fruits that are vulvic, an item on a desk that on inspection is a naked woman upended. At other times, the sex play is explicit. However, in either case, there is a sense of fun, of enjoyment, of pleasure being had.
Buckwalter’s work made me smile. Repeatedly.
