Whitehot Picks: Through the Looking Glass Paintings by Natsumi Goldfish & Jeffrey Morabito curated by WILLIAM NORTON July 12- August 15, 2026

 Jeffrey Morabito, The Rein of a Wimpling Wind, 44" x 68", Oil on Linen, 2026

July 9th, 2026 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Through the Looking Glass  - Paintings by Natsumi Goldfish & Jeffrey Morabito curated by WILLIAM NORTON 

July 12- August 15, 2026 SHOWROOM Gallery 57-52 58th Place | Maspeth, NY @guerrapaint 

The window has long been one of art’s oldest metaphors. It asks us to look through, not merely at. But what happens when looking becomes falling? In Through the Looking Glass, artists Natsumi Goldfish and Jeffrey Morabito invite us to do what Alice did best: ignore common sense, follow the White Rabbit, and tumble headfirst down the rabbit hole into a world where familiar boundaries quietly dissolve. “No time! No time!” cries the White Rabbit, forever hurrying toward somewhere just beyond our reach, but this exhibition asks viewers to slow down instead.

Jeffrey Morabito, Flaco, 30" x 22", Oil on Linen, 2025
 

The journey is not about arriving but about wondering and no wandering—allowing curiosity to replace certainty and discovering that the world is stranger, funnier, and more mysterious than we imagined. For Natsumi Goldfish, the aquarium becomes Wonderland itself: a room with four windows and no curtains. Her exquisitely rendered paintings ask us to inhabit the lives of goldfish suspended within transparent walls. Protected, nourished, admired—and constantly observed—they occupy a paradise that is also a prison, possibly a potential meal for the questioning cats.

Reflections on the glass fold together interior and exterior until we no longer know whether we are watching the fish, or whether the fish have quietly begun watching us. Jeffrey Morabito approaches the looking glass from the opposite side. His expressive paintings place owls, birds, dogs, cats and other creatures just beyond our windows, where memory and imagination intermingle. The animals often feel like beloved companions who have wandered away—less the Cheshire Cat dispensing cryptic wisdom than the lost cat whose photograph is stapled to a telephone pole, quietly asking us to notice what has disappeared.

 
Natsumi Goldfish, Fish Tank V "Escape", Oil on Canvas, two panels, Approximate 21 x 17.5", 2023

These are not the Queen of Hearts’ playing cards marching in formation, but the handmade notices of everyday hope and longing that flutter through our neighborhoods. Like Alice meeting the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, who insists that size and identity are never quite fixed, both artists remind us that perspective changes everything. Stand too close and you see paint. Step back and another reality appears. Move again, and the image transforms once more. There are no grinning cats offering easy answers here. 

 Fish Tank IV "A New Home", Oil on Canvas, 11 x 14", 2023

Fish Tank Arrangement I, Oil on Canvas, 11 x 14", 2020, (This is the Fish tank with an eye)
 

No croquet matches with flamingos. No impossible tea parties. Yet the spirit of Wonderland lingers throughout the exhibition. We are encouraged to become gloriously lost, to question what separates inside from outside, human from animal, observer from observed. Sometimes the most extraordinary discoveries begin exactly where they shouldn’t—with a glance through a window… and the decision to follow the rabbit. 

Exhibition Dates: Sunday July 12 - Saturday August 15, 2026 OPENING Sunday July 12, 2026 from 3-6 pm Gallery Hours M-F 12-6 pm 

For press inquiries, interviews, or images, please contact: William Norton: Email: thewilliamnorton@gmail.com