“In Sight” Exhibition
Olsen Gruin
This event has ended.
Olsen Gruin presents In Sight, a winter group exhibition designed to raise awareness about our precious Earth and address what is at stake in the age of climate crisis. Taking an opposing stance to the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” when it comes to caring for our planet, In Sight will feature drawings, paintings, photography, sculptures, and mixed-media works by Alphachanneling, Anna-Wili Highfield, Bo Droga, Delfina Braun, Edo Costantini, Joseph McGlennon, Juanli Carrión, Laura Jones, Leila Jeffreys, Melissa Coote, Ori Carino, and Ray Smith.
Showcasing artists from varying regions of the world, In Sight, allows environmental issues to be seen through dynamic perspectives and mediums. Alphachanneling’s work dives into the rawness of nature through subject matter and form. The artist depicts sexual scenes, set in the embrace of flora and fauna, depicted with bare and reduced colored pencil line work. Through whimsical illustrations, nature is personified in union with humankind.
Joseph McGlennon’s series Florilegium is a direct response to magnified fading memories in observing nature at its most fragile and elusive. McGlennon’s photographs feature collage-style and digitally enhanced layers to produce remarkably detailed imagery that is representative of rich landscapes.
Delfina Braun’s ‘Naturaleza Muerta’ is a melancholic series of drawings that portrays endangered and extinct flowers from around the world, mostly native to Amazonia, Indonesia and Australia. The flowers she chose to illustrate are the most extravagant and rare kinds from around the world, and therefore survive in exotic habitats; mainly forests and rainforests. Braun intends to portray the miraculous beauty of life and its vulnerability under human’ massive pollution and destruction.
Leila Jeffreys’ work forges an emotional and sympathetic bond with the audience as she establishes parallels between the ‘flock’ and our human concept of ‘community’; a commentary on our need to preserve wildlife societies and their homes. “There exists a symbolic relationship between birds and trees,” says Leila Jeffreys. “Their survival depends on each other. We depend on them. These birds serve as a visual reminder to leave wild places for these other societies to enjoy, as well as our own.”
Edo Costantini uses the Purveyors of Chinese Wuxing philosophy, also known as Five Element Theory, to visualize key elements in our environmental issues. This ideal proposes that there exists a cycle of five seasons, each of which represents a different natural process, relating to either birth or death — generation or decay. In a flower is not a flower, we see representations of each of these phases — the blossoming of a flower, the splintering of a dying branch, the sun’s fiery glow on dried leaves. In each frame, Costantini captures a story we all innately know: the impermanence of life, the inevitable end of each of its phases and the birth of new life in death’s wake. The white flowers that reappear throughout the series may be analogous to the hope that is kindled and nurtured by younger generations amidst ecological catastrophes we now face. At the same time, the white lily stands as the traditional flower of death in Western culture, and may very well offer the same meaning here, introducing a darker metaphor; perhaps we are attending mother earth’s funeral, the flowers: a mark of her burial site. In discussing his process, Costantini remarked that each photo was taken under the light of a full or new moon. “Whether it is day or night, visible or not, the moon is always there”. Costantini implies the famous Hermetic idiom— as above, so below. Like the moon, earth’s life is always moving, rotating and entering new phases. As these phases accelerate in response to environmental damage, we observe a drastic new cycle of life and death that may well come to a full stop in the near future.
Laura Jones luminous paintings embody a deep admiration for the natural world. Impacted by a trip made to the Great Barrier Reef, Jones expresses the interconnectedness of environments around the world. Her work, Gaia, combines warm and cool tones on opposing sides to contrast the trauma of the barrier reef that is seen through mass coral bleaching. The large scale of her work brings awareness and strikes viewers with the fear of an ecosystem absent of color and life.
Media
Schedule
from January 22, 2020 to March 16, 2020
Opening Reception on 2020-01-24 from 18:00 to 20:00