Hard-edge painting has rarely been so romantic—or had such an enchanting soundtrack. Visual and musical artist Amadour’s exhibition of breezy architectural abstractions, “Echolocation” (even the name evokes a merger of sound and space), explores the recurring motif of stately archways framing views of bright Pacific horizons. Single, double, triple, and proliferating tall round-tipped windows set off color-blocked arrangements of interior grounds, cool and hazy white skies, and minty blue seas. One has the sensation of standing inside a room (a villa, really) and staring out at the distant flatness. The “walls” into which the windows are cut is rendered not as brick and mortar, but as a profusion of pencil drawings—mathematical, interlocking planes, geometric perspectives, and bits of dimensional modeling with the chaos-adjacent energy of murmurating flocks and the precision of engineering notations.

However, the inspiration for these edificial meditations are the sweeps of building and bridge exteriors, phenomenological landscapes, and the poetic expressivity of acoustics. On closer approach, it is revealed that through operations of tape, brush, and blade it is the far reaches of the pictorial space which are rendered last, on, top, closest to the viewer and thus “inside” along with us. Sparkling beams of metallic pigment, especially gold, catch the light and leap off the surface, remembering sunshine. The eye moves around the space, imbuing it with a more urgent lifeforce that the reserved palette and delicacy of details might first display.

Amadour, “Looking Out from this Unmade Bed,” 2023. Courtesy of Lauren Powell Projects.

This exhibition coincides with the artist’s EP release, Western Movie Dream, a sort of retro lush, stylized and earnest sound with the softness of the cocktail bar and the wit of a literature salon. Each painting is named after a lyric from the music—As We Gazed Across the Blue, The Warmth of Being with You, Our Souls Are Meant to Meet—and live performances have happened throughout the show—notably, at its closing reception on March 18, 4pm. Once heard, it’s easy to imagine hearing those cheeky strains lilting within the walls of these elusive palazzi, considering not only how sound moves in space, but helps define it—and how buildings might remember the romances that have flourished within.