NYAB Event - Naomi Reis “Planted”

Naomi Reis “Planted”

Mixed Greens Gallery

This event has ended.

Mixed Greens presents Planted, an ambitious, site-specific window installation by Brooklyn-based artist Naomi Reis. Using mylar collages that incorporate real and artificial houseplants sourced from the nearby Flower District, Reis creates a mixed-media installation that traverses two- and three- dimensions and transforms the windows into luscious verdure.

In her past work, Reis created labor-intensive collages by building up layers of painted paper and mylar. Subverting traditional landscape painting, this work presented inside views of botanical conservatory biomes where “nature” is staged, complicating our assumptions about what is interior and exterior, natural and manufactured. Mimicking the pieced-together quality of these constructed natural preserves, Reis’ collage technique draws attention to the illusionistic nature of image-making itself.

For Planted, Reis adds another layer of complexity by placing potted plants behind the collaged elements, occupying the “space between” on multiple levels. Situated in the narrow gap between façade and interior, Planted references the Japanese aesthetic concept of ma: an interval or a void, the space between one thing and another. In this in-between space, notions of authorship and authenticity are questioned. Behind the glass windows, the boundaries between the translucent and opaque, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, artificial and natural blur rather than collide.