Hansi Fuchs: SUGAR CRUSH

Somewhere between the Sonny Angels at the register and the Labubus dangling off downtown tote bags, the blind box became the defining purchase of the moment: you pay for the not-knowing.

SUGAR CRUSH is filled with blind boxes: stacked, nested, painted, turned into grids, built into whole cities. And it runs on two contradictory feelings: wonder at what might be inside, and suspicion the box might be Pandora's.

A shelf of primary-colored felt boxes greets you at the door. One holds a felt orrery, complete with a little sun, Saturn, and Earth on sticks, plus an actual Milky Way bar and a pack of Orbit gum. The solar system has become the candy aisle. Adorable.

Then there are the paintings, cheery and bright, but not quite right. A Monopoly board covered in bright pink. Cartoon figures smothered with red gingham checks. Alphabet blocks falling on black next to shadowy silhouettes of Santa, scissors, and… handcuffs?

On cot-like tables, vintage Viennese chocolate boxes decorated with tiny castles rest on pillows. It's a nod to the Betthupferl, the little sweet given to Austrian children before bed. The "chocolates" inside are creepy: a cancerous rabbit, a zombie dragon, a brain that looks like excrement. Here, at least, you know what you’re getting.

All this leads toward the show's centerpiece: a metropolis made from gray felt storage boxes, a toy train running through the center. Joseph Beuys's material of warmth and survival, run through IKEA and held together with what looks like children's Band-Aids.

And it dawns on you, with Canal Street loud and cantankerous outside the gallery, these childhood stories rest on the same, now crumbling, systems as candy factories and real estate speculation. We can only hope for a soft, sweet landing such as this.

Hansi Fuchs (b. Linz, Austria, 2000) lives and works in Hamburg, Germany, where she’s studying with painter Jutta Koether at the Hochschule für bildende Künste. Her work has appeared in group shows in Hamburg, Ljubljana, Vienna, and Berlin. SUGAR CRUSH is her New York debut.