NYAB Event - Shea Hembrey "dark matters"

Shea Hembrey "dark matters"

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery

This event has ended.

When I first heard about dark matter, the first visual that I immediately connected to this mystery was what I see when my eyes are closed: that mercurial, unfixing, shifting darkness. It is a visual that is intimate and continuously available yet it is also vast and unobtainable.
-Shea Hembrey, 2012

Following his acclaimed project SEEK, featured as a 2011 TED Talk, Hembrey's new work attempts to visualize his 20 year exploration of dark matter and dark energy (scientifically hypothesized to comprise over 95% of the cosmos). Hembrey's paintings and sculptures are a collective meditation on the unseen structure of our universe.

Painted with trompe l'oeil technique, the series Unstill Lifes attempts to visualize the tangible structures of matter pared down to bits. Ghostly wisps of smoke appear to the viewer at certain angles and improbable assemblages of matches, tree branches, and string appear to float off of the inky blackground.

Universal Portraits are lyrical sculptures that serve as models of the cosmos. Working with a range of materials from feathers to moonstones, each piece in this series offers a physical manifestation of the whole of existence--both atomic matter and that mysterious dark matter and dark energy.

radius, a sculpture from the series Strewn, is comprised of straw that has been worked into the event horizon of a black hole, a well of dark energy, or possibly a wormhole into a parallel universe.
dark matters coincides with the recent wave of remarkable cosmological achievements, most notably the purported discovery of the "Higgs Boson" at the CERN laboratory in Geneva and the transmission of photographs from Mars by the Curiosity Rover. In this spirit of investigation and exploration, Hembrey reminds us to always remain curious in our continuing quest for answers.

In 1974 Shea Hembrey was born into a family of farmers, factory workers, hunters, trappers, musicians and cockfighters and grew up in Hickory Grove, Arkansas. He has an MFA from Cornell but is really a graduate of life.

[Image: Shea Hembrey "hatch" (2012) acrylic on board, 46 x 46 in. (detail)]