A Decent Docent: Gavin Creel’s Walk on Through
7 / 10
Like a lot of recent solo shows (see also Rachel Bloom), Walk on Through runs aground when it tries to accommodate the emotional impact of the pandemic, as Creel and director Linda Goodrich arrive at an overdramatic curtain-pulling depiction of the Met’s shutdown of the museum. But once Creel does head back to the museum, he encounters a new visitor, and the two of them discuss their differing interpretations of an Edward Hopper painting of the view from the Williamsburg Bridge. One sees a hopeful daydreamer looking out that window, another someone crushed by the loneliness of the city. “We’re both looking at the same thing, but we’re each seeing it totally differently,” Creel muses. That’s one of those little observations that might seem trite, but it does carry a lot with it. You go to an exhibition, or a musical, to encounter someone else’s view of the world, but you yourself can only see it through your own little window. And your view, in turn, can become its own layer of interpretation, passed off to someone else.
