Contributed by Chunbum Park / The title of British-German painter Lexia Hachtmann’s solo exhibition “Waiting Room,” at YveYANG in Soho, alludes to David Lynch’s surrealist television series Twin Peaks, in which the “red room” or “waiting room” is an extradimensional space where time does not flow sequentially. The program ushered in the 1990s, when Hachtmann was born. In the moment, the nineties seemed to be the height of the American Century and still evoke nostalgia. Often overlooked is the fact that during this supposedly halcyon epoch, popular culture normalized homophobia, sexism, and racism more than it does now, even when Trumpist backsliding is taken into account. Hachtmann confronts this kind of slippage between memory and reality with subtlety and heart.
