HESSE FLATOW is pleased to present Reverse Cascade, a group exhibition curated by Kirsten Deirup featuring the work of Bridget Caramagna, Kirsten Deirup, Chie Fueki, Hope Gangloff, Delphine Hennelly, Sophie Larrimore, and Grace Rosario Perkins. Chef Mina Stone will prepare a culinary presentation during the opening reception.
The earliest known depiction of juggling dates to ancient Egypt. A wall painting in the tomb of Beni Hasan shows slender, angular women with their heads tilted upwards at balls hovering above them. We don't know for certain whether the women are performing for the amusement of others or as part of a religious ritual. Either way the physics of juggling remains the same: it is a dance with gravity. The juggler must simultaneously propel and receive the objects, creating a continuous motion that resembles a visual sleight of hand, where props appear to be suspended in midair.
Paradoxically, to maintain control over multiple objects in one's peripheral vision, the juggler must focus their gaze straight ahead, relying on muscle memory developed through extensive practice. Juggling demands experience and instinct; if the performer focuses on any single object for too long, the whole thing risks falling apart.
In many ways, the painter is a juggler, a conductor of all the elements of their experience. Painters must contend with the surface and be in total control of the materials, all the while holding the weight of subject matter and content. They must keep in mind historical significance and contemporary relevance, acknowledging the entire history of art and politics, past and present. They must maintain a purity of intention while knowing where their work fits into the discourse. When facing the blank canvas, the challenge is in tuning out a cacophony of information clamoring for attention, and ignoring the floating heads hovering around the studio of critics, colleagues and competitors.
In the end, the painter must find a way to navigate these myriad forces, relying on intuition to know what to embrace and when to resist. It is a precarious struggle to find order in chaos. But when it works, it works. An alchemical magic trick occurs that makes something out of nothing. A painting can make the inanimate appear animate, a flat surface luminous and deep. It can compress time into a rectangle, through narrative image or through the facture of the paint itself.
Reverse Cascade brings together seven women who have a particular dedication to their working practice, to their balancing act…
Caramagna’s flawlessly smooth surfaces are nearly devoid of the human hand and take us to a theoretical space of sacred geometries.
Larrimore's rich colors on raw linen denote tapestries and motifs steeped in archetypal psychology.
While Gangloffs paintings are bursting with psychedelic color, we get the distinct feeling they are derived from lived experiences.
Perkins’ paintings are a collage of signifiers as well as materials. They act as maps that have been reassembled and activated through personal narrative.
Deirup’s paintings of invented arrangements are allegories of consumer culture that grapple with ideas of artifice, ornamentation, and decay.
Fueki’s paintings of compacted memory, create a kaleidoscopic effect that works from up close and at a distance, that are both surface and space.
Hennelly’s surfaces are a vocabulary of color and brushstroke that evoke mythology, art history, and feminism.
The juggler continues adding props to their performance until they achieve what appears to be impossible to the viewer. The audience watches the process with their own eyes, yet can still hardly believe what they see. The same might be said of the works of these painters, who have achieved a dexterity of a different sort, an equilibrium of material and meaning.
