Volume Gallery is pleased to present Arrangements, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Arina Erdélyi, opening September 17th, from 5-8PM in gallery two.
In a series of ceramic lighting and wall works, Erdélyi explores tensions of scale and perspective through the pairing of miniature and full-scale forms. Table lamps frame miniature domestic scenes illuminated beneath silk shades, while full-scale plates hang above, extending these scenes into the surrounding space. The surface of each ceramic piece is defined by repeated impressions of a single trimming of ancestral lace pressed into the clay before being fired in a dark, matte black glaze. This motif travels across lamps and plates alike, turning a domestic ornament into a recurring mark, as the delicate pattern settles over these structures like draped cloth or an accumulation of dust in a preserved or abandoned room.
At the center of the exhibition, a composition of plates forms a fixed arrangement on the gallery wall, echoing the mantelpiece display of heirloom plates Erdélyi grew up with. Traditionally, the seven plates across the base represent the seven castles of Transylvania, while the single plate at the top stands for Transylvania itself. Beneath this point of stability, everything is much less certain.
Within their miniature rooms, two chairs gather around a mantel and continually shift, circle and reposition themselves across each piece. These rearrangements introduce a sense of restlessness and uncertainty, as the viewer finds themselves caught in a disorienting loop. The three arrangements of The Mantel Room are each presented in their complete edition of three, bringing all nine lamps into the gallery at once. What might ordinarily remain a simple designation–1/3, 2/3, 3/3–instead turns the logic of editioning into another form of ritual and repetition. Through this repetition, the distinction between sameness and difference gradually collapses.
Despite their solemnity, Erdélyi’s works are attentive to the small pleasures of detail. A certain theatricality runs through them, where the composed and the faintly absurd can coexist. This sensibility finds expression even in the lighting hardware: integrated into the architecture of each piece, a practical necessity takes on the unexpected form of a miniature chimney.
Studies in architecture and furniture design taught Erdélyi to think at a reduced scale, imagining spaces and objects through drafting and model making. The physical construction of these models became a way of directly engaging with material and making, laying the groundwork for her approach to sculpture and ceramics. She has remained drawn to the miniature as a concentrated space for exploring scale, spatial choreography, and surface ornamentation. For her, these preoccupations have been handed down as much as studied: Erdélyi comes from generations of Transylvanian craftspeople—blacksmiths, furniture makers, and tool and die makers steeped in material tradition. She has inherited these histories, which resurface in the forms and patterns of her contemporary work.
Arrangements will be on view through October 24, 2026.
Arina Erdélyi is an artist and designer whose practice dwells on the gestures, rituals, and arrangements of domestic space. Grounded in a lineage of Transylvanian craft, spanning blacksmithing to furniture making, Erdélyi continues this inheritance instinctively. Recent exhibitions include LA Design Weekend and Felix Art Fair. Erdélyi lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.