The Magician’s Choice: An Art Exhibition

An art curator and a magician have more in common than you might think. Tasked with organizing an exhibition of artwork by talented contemporary art students at New York University (NYU), I discovered this truth through an encounter with an uncanny painting I saw in an artist’s studio, depicting a suited magician in high heels performing the Zig Zag Girl illusion onstage. In the foreground of artist Chloe Rady’s Step Right Up (2026), an angel figure appears at once entranced and shocked by the scene of a woman being taken apart in cabinet segments by the magician. The characters create a circuit of gazes that ends with the viewer self-consciously looking from the perspective of the audience.