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PERSEPHONE

Portage Garage, Hamtramck, Michigan, USA

July 19, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carrier

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Hold Something, To Hold Something Else

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Venus of Willendorf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deposit 1, Deposit 2, Deposit 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edifice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Catch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Venus of Hohle Fels

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hallow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crater

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The story of Persephone fills the role within the library of Greek mythology as a representation of season’s change. As the daughter of the goddess of the vegetation, that shoots out of the earth in the spring, is abducted and forced below to marry and become queen of the underworld, life gives way to barren land, creating winter. Mythology provides ways to comprehend and conceptualize the living world, but as it spans time, meaning transforms through the digestion of generational differences. Conceptually speaking, the generations on earth right now may think to cannibalize this story in a bit of a different way, relating directly to her and the melancholic embrace of her circumstance as she experienced the pain of disconnection with nature, without any control at all as she watched the world around her burn.

The pieces in this exhibition come together like amoebas in space, seeming to have no connection, and at the same time, potentially having limitless connection to each other. Each piece was conceived from an abstraction of its prior form, some from the history of art, some from modern industrial forms, natural forms, and trash. As the architecture of the gallery space is challenged by the imitation crater that consumes a majority of the floor, a similar relation occurs between the wall works, which include one painting that references classical art history, and several sculptures inspired by plastic bottles, presenting a persistent question of the hierarchies that exist from object to object and between nature and everything else.