This Sacred Vessel

Exposition de groupe

Arsenal Contemporary is pleased to present This Sacred Vessel (pt. 1). Reflecting on the long shadow cast by the tradition of landscape painting, this exhibition explores a complex relationship to the environment as it undergoes grave changes. The ten painters gathered in the exhibition carve out space through their chosen medium — grasping the complexities between ecological and personal anxiety. Varying from abstraction and representation, reality and illusion, the selection of paintings speaks to the indelible human mark on nature, retranslated in certain cases as psychological states rather than definite sites. By deliberately not upholding the canonical genre, the artists allow their work to diverge from the legacies of exploration, colonialism and the cartesian portrayal of space. Instead, space-making is here reshaped around the understanding of the world as one enmeshed and entangled with this damaged, ever-changing earth and our personal relation to it. 

The subdued intensity of Alex Kwartler’s bright orange painting depicts a deliquescing snowflake within a blazing surrounding. Brook Hsu’s use of toxic green alludes to a corrosive yet ethereal universe. The intimate scale of her painting prompts the viewer to come close, establishing tight proximity with her works, allowing them to enter the loose fables she composes. In turn, François Lacasse’s paintings seem to refer to a vast subaquatic landscape overrun by amoebas. There is something similarly oceanic in Melanie Authier’s painting, albeit more diaphanous. Behind the draping shapes and delicate palette of Authier’s painting, there is an impression of movement, fastening the viewer under her breaking wave. Rick Leong’s large painting depicts seaside bank in which sediments and water currents are been stacked into a vertical composition. The miry strata trigger a sense of discomfort as we come to understand this swampy accretion as an index of water level changes that will ultimately yield disaster. 

In Michael Assiff’s paintings, nature appears barren; unable to thrive. A floral arrangement seems paralyzed under a heavy coat of paint, as if frozen in a perpetual state of display. In reality, Assiff’s work is defined by a painstaking process of careful preparation, taking hours to assemble a detailed composition and the verisimilitude of flora that is his subject. Wanda Koop’s works are concerned with the intangible forces that have an impact on the environment, such as radio waves, nuclear activity, and pollution. Her work is informed by the constant flow of information that apprises our relationship to the natural world. Multilayered in blooms of color, they reveal a quiet meditation on the malaise of our times brought on by pressing ecology plights. 

Cindy Ji Hye Kim’s phenakistoscope painting, a reference to this early animation device, paradoxically amplifies the fixedness of the subjects caught within it. Perpetually climbing a ladder in this implied animation, these female characters foolhardily aim to reach a higher point, a clearer vantage, of a dense site like the cities we inhabit. The delicate palette and curated pastiche of Sojourner Truth Parson’s canvas suggests a cityscape viewed through literal rose-tinted glasses. This deeply personal exploration of a public space parses through the marriage of iconic vantages and the quiet pleasures of the everyday. Trained in portraiture, Janet Werner’s works are composites of images of (mostly) women culled from fashion magazines. The spaces these subjects inhabit straddle an ideological openness and the trappings of psychological anxiety of the ideal realms that only these sleek images capture. 

Artistes exposés

• Michael Assiff
• Melanie Authier
• Brook Hsu
• Cindy Ji Hye Kim
• Wanda Koop
• Alex Kwartler
• François Lacasse
• Rick Leong
• Sojourner Truth Parsons
• Janet Werner