Like renders that have become increasingly realistic, Erin Wright’s paintings plumb the muddy in-between of real and surreal. The artist, architect, and professor of architecture at Woodbury University, depicts objects with a sense of the tangible: the reflection of water inside a glass you can almost feel in your hand, the shine of a kitchen faucet, a contoured doorknob just asking to be rotated. At albertz benda’s Los Angeles gallery, Wright blurs the boundaries one step further, depicting a home’s infrastructure. In her first solo show at the gallery, Fever Dream, on view from February 24 to March 28, the artist mixes painting and architecture, turning the space into a real and imagined home.
Situated in a midcentury home in the West Hollywood hills, the paintings take on new life. A depiction of a glass door, overlooking the surrounding greenery from a patio, is framed in steel with recessed hardware, much like the real-life glazing within the gallery.
The exactness prompts further reflection. Another painting continues the steel frame, creating a frosted window where the shadows of trees feel at home adjacent to a real opening, revealing a patio and greenery. Wright also depicts furniture in the exhibition, including designs by Faye Toogood and Wendell Castle. The real-life objects, shown by Friedman Benda, are displayed alongside their depictions. Fever Dream is a game of duplication.
“I think duplication expands the conversation about originality and fidelity,” said Wright. “The gap between the represented object, its latest representation, and the process of translation creates a loop for the viewer to cycle through.”
Wright refers to the work as “architectural stickers” for the playfulness of layering infrastructure and design elements to walls like wallpaper. The effectiveness changes with the site. At albertz benda, the stickers paint an illusion. In other places, not so much. Much like design itself, site specificity is everything.
Within the context of the midcentury home, the provocations of simulation are in the spotlight. When does imitation begin to stand in for the real thing? When do depictions of architecture become architecture?
“My personal stance is that things necessary for shelter, air, light, enclosure are buildings, not architecture, and that architecture begins with joy or pleasure in mind,” continued Wright. “In early primitive structures, apertures for releasing smoke from fires, or for wind direction, or safety views, are just building elements. But when the inhabitant builds an aperture because the view is pleasurable to look at, that is architecture. Because painting, making and looking, are pleasurable, they are immediately architecture.”
Fever Dream is on view at albertz benda Los Angeles from February 24 to March 28, 2026.