Rise: New Works
by Olivia Lahs-Gonzales and Paula Lincoln
June 21 – July 26, 2019
The Gallery at The Kranzberg
Much of my photo, video, and drawing work has centered on the investigation of our dichotomous relationship with nature. Taken in domestic gardens, garden centers, and areas designated as “nature reserves,” the photographs have often been large-scale close-up photographs of organic subjects that are meant to both invite and repel the viewer. I use limited depth of field and selective focus as “psychological triggers,” to evoke the small and often terrible dramas that occur beneath our feet and just outside our scope of vision. In this series, I try to subvert the boundary between reality and fiction. My hope is to render the mysterious beauty that is created through the collaboration between optical and physical “realities.” The photos also stand in opposition to “Sierra Club” calendar images that transform nature into a safe, accessible consumer product. The way we think about nature is mediated by commercial and literary representations, and I am interested in communicating the tension that the camera can create between our perception of the natural world and our interpretation of it. A related series of layered mixed-media drawings further explores these ideas. In these drawings, I use a combination of watercolor, acrylic paint, graphite, ink, charcoal, and sometimes sculptured hot glue or collaged elements to further expand on the imagery found in the photographs. –Olivia Lahs-Gonzales
Repetition.
As a child, helping out in my parent’s garden, it felt like the weeds would always win. They’d choke the life out of the valuable plants and sometimes cut my hands or secrete some kind of juice that would burn. The least valuable plants had the strongest defenses. Working on my latest projects, I like to build large, complex pieces using the same, simple forms until I feel overwhelmed, as though by a swarm or infestation. This childhood feeling of growth out of control propels most of my work. I’m fixated on the idea of tiny, insignificant parts creating a large, threatening mass.
Nature.
It seems that nature is tired of our destructive ways and is now trying to get rid of us through fires, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It doesn’t seem so far- fetched to imagine hordes of ants coming in to take over like a scene from a horror movie. Alfred Hitchcock’ “The Birds” is my ideal representation of nature’s revenge. I’d like to produce the same effect, but with insects and plants in sculpture. Nature is taking back what we have tried to control. You can see it in the old abandoned buildings with trees growing from the rooftops or tree roots refusing to cooperate with the grids we impose on the landscape. –Paula Lincoln
