Tyger Tyger Gallery (Asheville, NC) is pleased to present:
NIGHT / VISIONARY, a five-person exhibition featuring works by Josephine
Close, Renato Órdenes San Martín, Kyung Soon Park, Christina Haglid and Eli McMullen.
Exhibition dates: January 13th - February 26th
Opening Reception: Friday, January 13th from 5-8 pm
Winter Hours: Tuesday-Saturdays from 10-5 pm, Sundays 11-5 pm
NIGHT / VISIONARY takes its cue from two central concepts: the nocturne - that is, art made
about, or during, the night - and the notion of the visionary in art, wherein the imagery is suffused with added philosophical and mystical intonations. Ritualized objects, otherworldly manifestations of light, dream-time visions, and magical realist narratives unfold throughout the exhibiting artists' intensely contemplative works on paper, panel and canvas. The exhibition runs from January 13th- February 26th.
"Every painting is a talisman, a visual poem, a spell. I am the channel, the medium, the spirit,"
writes Josephine Close, a Los Angeles-based painter whose practice coalesces at the intersection of art and magic. In her series entitled Spells, Close depicts crystals, feathers, and bits of flora and fauna, arranged from a fish- eye perspective so that they appear larger than life, with a sensual surface made from ink, wax, and metallic leafs and pigments on paper or panel. These still-life forms cluster together as if in some new hybrid ecosystem, juxtaposed against midnight-black skies and distant stars. Chains tether in looping swags between quartz crystals and bits of vegetation, suggesting both adornment and pendulum divination. While associations can easily be drawn with occult practices, there is a more nuanced alignment with the vivid, uncanny clarity of dutch floral still-life painting. However, the absence of a traditional still-life tabletop or ledge grounding the horizon line allows for Close's imagery to easily transcend beyond the symbolic by creating a space the viewer can engage with more intimately.
Chilean artist Renato Órdenes San Martín has been creating a series of watercolor paintings since 2020 that are an exploration of material relationship and poetic resonance, shifting between real and imagined spaces. Bringing to mind the thought-forms of Theosophy as well as Odilon Redon's spectral, haunting landscapes, these small works on paper feel massive, as if they have recorded an ecstatic psychical state or a paranormal event where pigment and water act as conduits. Painted in a vertical format and often with a symmetrical composition, repeated motifs of swirling sky forms hover over and into caves, mountains, and bodies of water. Shafts of light and bright-colored and patterned bands that shimmer with inclusions of interference pigments radiate from sauron-like eye shapes, orbs, and eclipsed celestial bodies. "I like the idea of seeing the world as a dream," San Martin writes, "a ruinous apparition, a specter, that withdraws from the reality I think I know and that in its journey leaves viscosities, traces, signs that I try to capture and translate."
Toronto-based artist Kyung Soon Park's hypnotic paintings of softly silhouetted, somewhat ghostly figures in lush gardens look like sleepwalkers dreamily communing in blue-washed, moonlit spaces. Park's work, inspired by memories of Korean textiles from her parents' business back in South Korea along with years of experience working with plants and flowers, feels immediately intimate, calming and searching. Figures wander among the flowers and trees, occasionally cradling or comforting each other. Transcending the sense of sadness and longing is one of healing and connection: the predominantly blue-green landscapes are tinged with passages of warm, glowing light, and the figures turn to look at distant spaces or each other, implying personal journeys of memory and identity.
"At the heart of my work is the recurring depiction of perseverance, strength of will, and a subtle optimism", Chicago artist Christina Haglid states, continuing, "Symbolically through the objects, precarious situations depict a moment of possible difficulty, often involving the influence of nature." Her gentle, surreal seascapes are informed by poetry and memory. Paper lanterns float on glassy turquoise waves like brightly lit stand-ins for a moon that can touch the water in her Night Ocean paintings, while in a recent series of gouache and watercolor works entitled Stars with Ocean, stars scatter across the entire surface: as above, so below. There is an intimacy that permeates these private worlds where light and air and water dance together, inviting the viewer in as a solo witness- and perhaps a participant as well.
In his own words, Richmond, Virginia artist Eli McMullen's work "memorializes ephemeral, nostalgic scenery that accentuates peculiar light qualities and explores psychedelic subtleties embedded within everyday surrounding landscapes." With heady fuchsia, cobalt, and cadmium tones, suburbia is visited by otherworldly, sentient light formations that form themselves into shapes that mimic and enhance the geometry of, say, a pitched roof or a window or some other shape seen from in a very suburban American street or back yard. Pop culture-driven imagery related to aliens and close encounters inform the overarching implications of these works, but without the central characters being depicted, McMullen's paintings become as much about geometry, color and saturated, pungent light in darkness as they are about the implied fantastical presence of unknown life forces.
Josephine Close was born in the woods of New Hampshire and now lives and works in a haunted cottage in Los Angeles. A self taught mixed-media painter whose primary focus is works on paper, she loves the natural world, poetry, magic, myths and fairy tales. Close's work was recently published in Taschen's book Witchcraft in 2021, and has also appeared in numerous in-print and online journals and entities such as Create Magazine, Hecate Journal, Jealous Curator, Candyfloss Magazine, and Blue Review. She has exhibited at venues including the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA), The Brea Gallery, The Philosophical Research Society, and Jerry Weems Gallery, all in California, and Faran Gallery (NY) and The Journal Project (Brooklyn).
Renato Órdenes San Martín received his Masters degree in Arts Education from UPLA, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies, and is co-founder of Worm - Cantera de Arte, a space dedicated to contemporary visual arts in Valparaíso, Chile. He has exhibited extensively in Chile and internationally, with recent exhibitions at OMA gallery in Santiago, Chile and Bark Gallery in Berlin, Germany. He currently works as a teaching artist at the UV School of Architecture, Arcos Professional Institute, PUCV Art Institute and BBAA Viña del Mar School, teaching courses on Form, Spatial Expression, Art Circuits, Volume and Space and Sculpture Workshop.
Christina Haglid holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and Sculpture, an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting. Her work has been featured in Huffington Post, POSIT Journal, The Paper Fair, and Chicago Gallery News, and exhibited at venues including Gallery Victor Armendariz and Ann Nathan Gallery in Chicago, Illinois where she lives and works.
Kyung Soon Park lives and works in Toronto, Canada. She received a BAA from Sheridan College, and worked as an award-winning illustrator for many years before transitioning to a painting-centered practice. Her paintings have been exhibited most recently at Art Toronto and she is represented by Diana Witte Gallery in Toronto, Canada where she lives and works. Her work has also been published in Taschen's Calendar, Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, Art Maze Magazine, Creative Quarterly, among a few.
Eli McMullen is a painter based in Richmond, Virginia. He received his BFA in Painting & Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015. His work has been exhibited at multiple venues including The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Glave Kocen Gallery, and Black Iris Gallery, all in Richmond, VA; Talon Gallery in Portland, OR, and Lump Gallery in Raleigh, NC. McMullen has also had his work published in Hi-Fructose Magazine, Richmond Magazine, and The Washington Post.
Tyger Tyger Gallery is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 am - 5 pm and Sundays from
11 am - 5 pm.
191 Lyman Street #144
Asheville, NC 28801
(828) 350-7711
mothership@tygertygergallery.com
Website: www.tygertygergallery.com
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