"Elizabeth Alexander’s first major solo exhibition at the gallery explores how the specific home decor we choose reflects both our personal aspirations as well as society’s values. Long fascinated by American material culture, Alexander creates elegant installations that reveal coded messages hidden in our domestic environment. She appropriates the accouterments of refined interior design such as wallpaper, upholstered furniture, and porcelain to upend our ideas about beautification and what constitutes a safe and happy home. By meticulously rearranging and editing the features of familiar decorative art objects, she prompts a wholesale (re)consideration of how we broadcast comfort, status, and affluence in our abodes. 

The show’s title, The Good Ones, refers to the fancy dinnerware reserved for guests often called ‘the good china.’ It conjures etiquette, behavioral norms, and a set of “traditional values” around hospitality and how, why, and when we perform as hosts. The Good Ones intermingles domestic vignettes of floral elegance containing a maelstrom of caste and cut wallpaper, retrofitted sconces, and toppled chandeliers among transformed porcelain and commemorative Confederate plates.”

-K Contemporary