Marcelle Reinecke’s Quiet Theater of Pleasure

Cherries in the Snow, on view at Monya Rowe from January 8 to February 14, showcases Marcelle Reinecke’s subtle exploration of intimacy and pleasure. Through imagined interiors and scenes of leisure, her paintings create environments in which tenderness is both protective and deeply human. [Read on]

When I spoke with Marcelle Reinecke, she was only days from giving birth. She described herself as “gigantic and tired and pregnant,” laughing as she noted her due date at the end of the month, with a possible induction sooner. This moment embodied a sense of doubling: a child about to arrive, a solo exhibition opening, and a body of work concluding as another life prepared to begin.

This sense of duality shows up in her exhibition at Monya Rowe. The paintings look gentle and contained, but they are full of emotion. When I first saw them, I thought about family rituals and the quiet places where intimacy grows: fishing trips, lake docks, cozy interiors, shag carpets, and firelight. These scenes felt familiar and almost protective, especially in a city where art often asks for intellectual engagement before emotional connection. Reinecke understood that reaction, but she surprised me. The leisure scenes she paints are not from her own childhood. She grew up primarily in the southern United States, so skiing and cabin life were not part of her upbringing. Even the hunting and fishing in her paintings came later. “I started hunting when I turned thirty,” she told me. “I was like, I’m gonna be a hunter.”

That difference matters. Her work is not about documenting nostalgia but choosing it. These paintings are not reconstructions of a past life. They are proposals for a life shaped intentionally. Desire, rather than memory, structures them.

Painting as World Building

Reinecke often begins with composition rather than narrative—a shift of light, the alignment of objects, the relationship between interior and exterior space. Sometimes art history becomes the starting point, not as homage but as raw material. She may take a biblical Baroque composition she does not relate to and imagine the figures doing something entirely different. The structure remains, but the story changes. Images are tools.

We discussed how visual hierarchies have become more flattened. On a single canvas, Caravaggio can sit beside a catalog spread or a friend’s photograph. Everything becomes equally available. Reinecke embraces this. “If I like something, I like it,” she said, without apology.

She mentioned the famous image of dogs playing poker. Nearly everyone recognizes it, but few know who painted it. It circulated through advertising and mass reproduction, becoming culturally universal long before institutions took an interest. For her, this is proof that visual power does not depend on prestige. Distribution shapes memory.

Her paintings often contain images inside images. Art hung on painted walls. References nested into imagined rooms. When I asked why, her answer was simple. The painting is a world, and she controls it. “I have full curatorial power inside my world. I decide what’s in it and what’s not.”

Time, Objects, and the Discipline of Specificity

That control extends to time. Her spaces hover between the 1960s and early 1990s, a period she did not fully live but feels visually drawn to. Furniture, clothing, packaging, and light all belong to this invented historical atmosphere. She builds rules for herself. No cell phones. No contemporary objects. These limitations create a container that sharpens creativity.

Sometimes she anchors a scene with an object that locates it precisely in time. In Coppertone Sunset, a bottle of sunscreen sits on a dock. She researched packaging designs across decades and chose one specific version rather than inventing a hybrid. The same attention appears in gum wrappers and other small objects. Nostalgia becomes exact rather than vague.

“There’s a nostalgia button you can hit,” she admitted. “You paint something familiar that doesn’t exist exactly anymore.” But specificity keeps it from becoming shallow. The work stays grounded in material history rather than drifting into comfort alone.

Sentimentality Without Apology

What feels especially radical in Reinecke’s work is her refusal to apologize for sweetness. When I asked how she balances sentimentality with restraint, she dismissed the idea that tenderness needs to be managed. “If there’s sincerity there, it doesn’t matter how cheesy it is,” she said.

In a culture that often values detachment over feeling, this is a brave position. Her paintings allow softness without defensiveness. They are emotionally direct without becoming naive. They trust viewers to meet sincerity without irony.

Intimacy as a Visual Language

Queerness in her work operates quietly. It is not announced. It is lived. Intimacy appears in gestures rather than spectacle. A moment that stayed with me was a painting where one person paints another’s toenails. Reinecke described this as more intimate than overt sexuality. It requires proximity, trust, and care.

She is not interested in vulgarity. Not out of conservatism, but because explicitness often flattens emotional complexity. Painting someone’s toenails, touching someone’s feet, sitting close in silence. These acts hold a kind of closeness that feels truer to daily life than performance-driven eroticism.

Her paintings expand what intimacy can look like. They argue that tenderness is not secondary to desire. It is its foundation.

A Painted Refuge

As our conversation widened, Reinecke spoke about painting as refuge. She watches the news. She knows what is happening. But painting is where she builds an alternative. “For me, art making is a separate zone,” she said. She does not want to spend her life reproducing catastrophe. She wants to make something she would want to be inside of.

Her paintings are not denial. They are insistence. A belief that interior life deserves space even when external life becomes overwhelming.

She said something that felt essential. Rights can be taken. Stability can be taken. Safety can be taken. But it is harder to take away simple pleasures. Teaching someone something small. Sharing food. Painting toenails. Sitting in warm light. These acts are quiet and resistant at once.

Pleasure as Discipline

Reinecke also pushed back against the idea that painting is relaxing. “People think it’s a hobby,” she said. “It’s not relaxing at all. It’s consuming.” It is demanding, stressful, and deeply rewarding. Her real hobbies are physical. Fishing. Hunting. Renovation projects. Anything that pulls her into the material world.

That makes sense. Her paintings are not fantasies. They are constructed worlds. Carefully built spaces that argue tenderness is not fragile. It is durable. It can be chosen. It can be practiced.

In Marcelle Reinecke’s work, pleasure is not decorative. It is a discipline.

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