The Palest of Green, Pink, and Mauve

 

 

 

Did you see the eclipse? Did you think it was rad? Did you cry? Did you hug all the humans? Did you get that feeling that you are part of something greater than yourself? 

 

The work presented in the group exhibition, “The Palest of Green, Pink, and Mauve”, addresses that feeling as well as the desire for human connection.

     Abrahamik’s photographs depict dream-like narratives driven by a longing for interpersonal bonding. For the artist, cannabis use in a social setting became a form of finding friendship through mutual physical experiences as bodily sensation spoke in ways language could not. 

     Lu’s video explores the fluidity of meaning as mediated through today’s digital climate.  The viewer is lulled into a guided meditation while paint covered hands playing the theremin evoke the movements of American Sign Language, shedding light on how communication is constructed and deconstructed; on what is lost and what is gained through various signifiers.

     Norton’s work is tied to the private care of houseplants, our occasional failures
as stewards of botanical life, and individual reflection on what it means to be implicated in something larger than one’s self. The large glass sheet, similar to a botanist’s microscope slide, becomes a way to observe natural cycles as the plants live and die inside her sculptures.

     Tarr’s painting ‘Faery’ brings to mind the 1917 Cottingley Fairies, a series of photographs created by two young girls Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in their family’s garden.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stated in his writing on the photographs that the recognition of their existence would prove to us that there is a ‘glamour and mystery’ to life. Tarr creates this “glamour and mystery” through the juxtaposition of precise lines and blurs of pastels, suggesting in turn the juxtaposition of culture and nature in our own lived experiences.

     By investigating the relationships between humans and nature, plants and animals, the digital world and the physical world, and the fantastic and the mundane, this exhibition explores our relationships with and participation in ‘the grand scheme of things’.

 

 

 

‘When I look up at the night sky and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up – many people feel small because they’re small and the Universe is big – but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. There’s a level of connectivity. That’s really what you want in life, you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant, you want to feel like you’re a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you.

That’s precisely what we are, just by being alive.’

 

• Neil DeGrasse Tyson

 

😉