LEAVING EDEN
Curated by Genie Davis
On view: February 11–February 26
Opening Reception: February 11, 6-9 p.m.
Artist’s Talk: February 25, 4 p.m.
Additional hours Th/Sun by appointment
Leaving Eden, opening February 11th in Los Angeles, is an immersive collaborative exhibition between Los Angeles-based artists Samuelle Richardson and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic. Curated by Genie Davis, the exhibition explores the idea that climate change has made the idea of leaving our Eden, the planet earth, all too real a prospect. What happens to the flora and fauna, the animal life – including the human animal – if we allow the continued environmental apocalypse to continue?
The collaborative exhibition will fill viewers with the joy of Richardson’s expressive textile animals and Petrovic’s immersive flowers, trees, and glistening waters. Gallery visitors will move – as the flourishing creatures and landscape in this art world do – from a lush, green, and blue Eden to a dry, desert world, where all life must struggle for food and water.
Divided into two rooms, an Edenic garden and a desert filled with Joshua Trees and cacti, the two artists have combined their gifts to create a vision to cherish and consider, one that expresses the beauty of nature and our vital need to protect it.
Together, the artists create stunningly beautiful and visceral work that is both of the earth - it’s animals, it’s landscape - and a mysterious magical fantasy about these living creatures and plants, shaping a world beyond our own. With climate change and other environmental issues looming, the exhibition is both a warning and a prayer - that we can still protect our planet, and rather than resigning ourselves to our own eventual banishment, we can return to the garden we’ve come so close to losing.
Samuelle Richardson
Richardson recently returned from a Visiting Artist residency at theAmerican academy in Rome where her research led to the uncanny Etruscan animal sculptures as seen in the artifacts of that time. She felt an instant connection to their exuberant character and masterful composition, and says the old-world belief that animals had divine power serves as a counterpoint to her view of the natural world,
diminished by modern society. She believes that a new way to talk about extinction could be as a fable where man and beast are entwined in a tale of redemption. Richardson’s art is rooted in classical training where anatomy was taught by a method known as écorché, building up the sculpted figure from skeleton to muscle to skin. From her early career as a painter, her work has evolved to include astonishingly alive textile sculptures and for the first time, in this exhibition, carved wooden boats made from pine lumber.
Snezana Saraswati Petrovic
Petrovic’s exciting interactive multimedia work features an emphasis on plastic, bioplastic, found objects, 3D printing, video, and augmented reality. The stunning visceral worlds she creates of radiant flora and fauna all begin with her observations of nature and research of symbolic meanings. She views this exhibition as “a natural progression of my exploration of gardens and homes within the looming danger of climate change and plastic overuse… I see this whole experience as a love poem to the earth.” Her work begins within the feminist discourse of “craftsperson,” but also delves into science and technology to construct a language that discusses environmental issues. Leaving Eden explores the idea of home depicted as plasticized flora/fauna as the only real Eden left to inhabit.
For additional images:
https://www.instagram.com/studiosamuelle/
https://www.instagram.com/saraswatioblak/
For further information contact:geniewrites2@gmail.com