Eva Mantell “wreckstasy”

Eva Mantell “wreckstasy”

Soho20 Chelsea Gallery

This event has ended.

wreckstasy is series of collaged, painted, and peeled layers of magazines and other articles appear visually as weathered billboards. Mantell formed these works in her backyard throughout the past year’s seasons, inevitably subjecting them to multifarious conditions: sun fading, frost, snow, rain, intense wind, drying out, curling up, wetting down, and the like. For her, to work outside was not only to willingly request that nature be a dutiful collaborator, but also to submit to and acknowledge the uncertainty of its ways. Mantell notes that this ecological uncertainty parallels the kind of personal losses experienced in any life: be they the passing of a loved one, or the inevitable process of life changes.

Reflective of Mantell’s desire for the work, the exhibition’s title conjoins the scientific term, “rhexistasy” (a geological word of Greek origin indicating intense erosion), with the multiple psychological and historical implications of the word “wreck.” As such, her work seeks to hold both the precarity of our ecological future, as well as the palpable feelings of loss that one may experience in reflecting on this dubiety. She notes her own and close friends’ loss when considering this aspect of the work.

In “On Common Sense,” a recent video talk for the online journal, The Edge, MIT-based art historian, and co-author of the book Picturing Science, Producing Art, Caroline A. Jones expresses her frustration that art must begin to perceive itself within a broader spectrum of history and move towards “interspecies symbiosis,” lest there be no human future in which to appreciate the arts. “These concepts are available and fully elaborated upon by, say, a biologist… but they’re still not central to the paradigm.”

Media

• Painting
• Installation

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