Allison Schulnik “Purple Mountain”

P.P.O.W.

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P·P·O·W presents Purple Mountain, Allison Schulnik’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Known for her uncanny approach to traversing the internal and immaterial terrains of nostalgia, memories, and dreams, Purple Mountain blurs the line between reality and fantasy to create a mystical portrait of home and motherhood within the stark desert landscape of Southern California. Born out of the seclusion of COVID, the challenges of living in a growingly inhospitable desert terrain, and experiences of deep personal loss, Schulnik’s new series of paintings, works on paper, and animated film reflects a coalescing of worlds where fear, mortality, and loss are met equally with resilience, interconnectedness, and the spiritual power of the natural world.

Hovering on the edge of the symbolic, the wildlife populating Purple Mountain is both real and imagined. In a series dedicated to the feline and canine night visitors to Schulnik’s home, which borders Joshua Tree National Park, Schulnik intertwines paintings of foxes, bobcats, and mountain lions with ghostly portraits of childhood pets and fictional animals from her daughter’s children’s books. Both entirely present and disappearing simultaneously, the creatures exude both beauty and frailty. This series is punctuated by Two Resting Unicorns, 2022, a monumental painting depicting two angelic unicorns lazily lounging in a heavenly lush pastel desert carpeted by flowering faces and twinkling stars.

Facing these works is a series of works on paper dedicated to a family of owls who visit Schulnik’s property every year. Spending many hours admiring their peacefulness in seclusion and ability to adapt to changes in the environment, Schulnik remarked that during intense times of pain, “staring into the eyes of the owl nightly reminded me of what it felt like to stare into the eyes of someone who is dying and is saying goodbye.” Depicted almost as totemic deities, the haunting owl portraits embody resilient strength and fearlessness in the face of change and death. Alongside the owls are a series of paintings of the Nerium Oleander plant at various times of day. One of the deadliest, hardiest flowers in the world, the Nerium Oleander is an invasive species in the desert. Although these plants denote danger and the inhospitably of the desert, Schulnik simultaneously depicts their stillness and sweet-scented beauty.

The exhibition’s namesake, Purple Mountain, 2022, a gouache-on-paper animation featuring 675 hand-painted frames Schulnik made daily through the most solitary days of COVID isolation, is both the setting and protagonist of the exhibition. Depicting the San Jacinto Peak, which dominates every window of her ranch house, Schulnik paints the mountain’s hourly color changes. Scored by The Musical Tracing Ensemble under the direction of Aaron MF Olson, Purple Mountain marks the shift in the mountain from morning to night, eventually transforming into a cobalt blue fairy who dances. This ballet of swirling color symbolizes the themes of motherhood, fertility, human connection, and loss at the heart of Schulnik’s exhibition.

Allison Schulnik (b. 1978) lives and works in Sky Valley, CA. Her films have been included in internationally renowned festivals and museums including MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Annecy International Animated Film Festival, Annecy, France; and Animafest Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia. Solo exhibitions of Schulnik’s work have been presented at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT; P·P·O·W, New York, NY; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Zieher Smith, New York, NY; and Galeria Javier Lopez & Fer Frances, Madrid, Spain, among others. Schulnik’s work can be found in numerous museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Santa Barbara Art Museum, Santa Barbara, CA; Museé de Beaux Arts, Montreal, Canada; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada; and The Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Her solo exhibition Ominous, Crude Beauty is on view at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA through January 16, 2023.