Anne Buckwalter

Anne Buckwalter, The Kiss

Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin, Germany

February 13, 2026 - March 21, 2026

"What’s in a kiss? It could be everything or nothing; the momentous climax of the story, or only its tentative beginning. There are every day, routine kisses, and desperate, pleading kisses. There are flirtatious kisses that project a world but (agonizingly, deliciously) do not promise it. Sometimes a kiss makes the floor fall out from under you, as in Buckwalter’s A Kiss from the Moon, where the vertical wood grain of floorboards becomes a vertiginous drop, while the moon’s cheeks are kissed from either side by the edges of curtains, making a beam of light fall across a pair of thighs draped over the end of the bed.

In this new body of work by Anne Buckwalter, the delirium of intimacy and furtive erotic encounters is contrasted with the prim order of ornately patterned interiors. Inspired by the decorative crafts of Pennsylvanian Dutch, the opulent floral wallpaper designs of William Morris, and the homely Victorian-inspired textiles of Laura Ashley, these scenes are often constructed with flattened perspectives, rendering them starkly open to a viewer’s curious gaze. Despite the tidy domestic order, an off-kilter, anticipatory sensation prevails: one half expects a painted vase to slide from its shelf; an egg to roll from its dish on the picnic blanket. "

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