I've never been to a real rave — the location-dropped-at-midnight, if-you-know-you-know, dance-til-you-drop kind. But if I ever get the chance, I want it to be in a space like Distillery Gallery, filled with work like Adria Arch is exhibiting in Anti-Gravity.

Anti-Gravity inhabits the Distillery's basement space like a gathering of friendly, mischievous witches. Suspended polystyrene forms, video projection, sound, and unexpected movement conspire to melt inhibitions. The color is saturated and brash, the shapes alien and alluring. Gravity is not the only thing Arch’s show is anti. It’s also anti-curation, anti-convention, and anti-apology. To enter is to be welcomed to a site of joyful resistance.

Adria Arch *Anti Gravity* at Distillery Gallery. All work 2025.

In the same spirit as Sam Gilliam's Drape paintings and Lynda Benglis's pours, Arch makes sculptures that are also paintings, or paintings that are sculptures, depending on how you look at it. The hybridity is her weapon — wielded against the modernist rules and conventions that hemmed in her creative vision for decades.

The confidence and cohesion of Anti-Gravity did not come easily. It is the result of forty years of work, patience, and experience. Arch explained when we met that doors had been closed to her throughout her career. She trained as a painter— a BFA from Carnegie Mellon and an MFA in painting from Mass Art in 1985. Back then, she says, painters were taught to work flat, women painters especially. Incorporating three-dimensionality was taboo. But she was always, in her words, “drawn to shape and negative space.” She sketched from nature, studied its forms. She loved dance. The aha moment came in 2017 at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe — fresh, wild, and, she emphasized, bringing a welcome sense of humor. Soon after, she began pulling her paintings off the wall and testing materials to make them hang the way she wanted. She had found her way to becoming a sculptor and a painter at once.

Adria Arch, *Lavender Loop,* 2025. Acrylic on polystyrene. 8’ x 8’ x 4’.

Arch belongs to the feminist cohort of artists who exploited cheap, disposable materials to challenge sculpture’s bronze and marble expectations—Eva Hesse with latex, Senga Nengudi with pantyhose, Harmony Hammond with bandages. Arch uses thin, white styrofoam she buys in 4’ x 8’ sheets from a shop down the street from her house. She uses acrylic paint because it bonds well to the plastic and accommodates her palate. If she was a punk rock singer, her name would be Poly Styrene.

Allison Tannenhaus’ video plays off of Arch’s sculpture in *Anti-Gravity*.

Marks inspired by Pattern and Decoration Movement artists like Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago blanket Arch’s cut-out planes and sensual folds. Her visual vocabulary includes repeating outlines of what could be tortoise shells, seed pods, shoreline ripple marks, and—my favorite—eyelashes. Shapes come intuitively. She works with Exacto-knives and scissors, cutting and folding and hanging, hanging and cutting, until the piece is born. Her sculptures hang from metal wire with visible knots and uncut ends. Some rotate from attached disco ball motors, while others respond to the movement of visitors. To be in the space is to want to dance with the work.

Following the feminist art tradition, Arch prioritizes collaboration. Adjacent to the main gallery, a squad of psychedelic works pair Arch with self-described glitch media artist Allison Tanenhaus. Here we get to consider Arch’s corporeal forms from a distance. The revvy, anarchic video mesmerizes, while suggesting a darker reality. Rather than biomorphic dance partners grooving with a sense of humor, these pieces conjure the existential angst slowing steps as dawn breaks over the highway on the way home from the rave. It’s all a big dance party til the DJ gets replaced by a video bot.

“I love dance, period.”

— Adria Arch

Arch welcomes the change in register, she never thinks of her work as exactly joyful, she admits, “but I want people to experience awe. I want them to feel like they discovered a Wonderland.”

On Saturday, May 2 the artist culminates her exhibition with a ten-minute original commissioned performance by the Human Movement Project, choreographed by Kimberleigh A. Holman. Dancers will activate the space, moving throughout the sculptures wearing headdresses and carrying staffs Arch created. Her vision is for this to be an interactive performance, involving everyone in the room.

Jennifer Roberts Muffin dances in Adria Arch's installation, *Do I Make You Happ*y, at Hess Gallery, Boston, MA. Image, Distillery Gallery.

Distillery Gallery is so hard to find it feels intentional, and once inside, the dim lighting, raw finishes, and absence of any sign of administration (no desk, no gallery staff, no visitor book splayed open to capture your email) locate the visitor in an independent gallery tradition difficult to find in the Boston area. This makes it the perfect setting for Anti-Gravity. Here is an an artist who has found her voice and revels in using it. If gravity is the force anchoring us to the familiar, Arch lifts us up, spins us around, and reminds us of the thrill of acting off the wall.

To secure tickets for the Human Movement Project Dance Performance Saturday, May 2, click here.
7 - 8, reception and artist talks. 8 - 8:15, performance.