Anina Major
Gaa Gallery is pleased to present Lichtung a group exhibition featuring Melissa Brown, Angelina Gualdoni, Adam Helms, Hipkiss, Heidi Howard, Kaylie Kaitschuck, Anina Major, Zoe McGuire, Hélène Padoux, Dan Schein, James Everett Stanley, Elizabeth Tibbetts, Lumin Wakoa, Autumn Wallace, and Erin Woodbrey.
Lichtung, translating from German to English as glade or clearing, is a group exhibition which celebrates the exuberance and strangeness of the natural world. Often characterized by grassy meadows, a sunlit space of lower laying plant life, or an opening amidst a stand of tall trees, a glade is an open area within the landscape serving an ecological and aesthetic function. A space made by natural processes- the result of certain weather conditions, grazing animals, clearings create opportunities for regeneration and sustenance for both plants, human and non-human animals.
In Lichtung we encounter the landscape through the soil, through windows, through glimpses of real and imagined places. We see clearings, both literal and metaphorical rendered in paint, graphite, textile, and in sculptural forms. In these works, nature is something we can see and prompts us to imagine the things that are hard to see. The minutia the human eye glazes over is captured and reinterpreted through image. Through art the complexities of nature are condensed and synthesized. Presenting an accumulation of moments, the artists in this exhibition portray themes of growth, decay, and transformation. Depicting decomposition and rebirth of plants, fungi, and insects, art takes in the cycles of nature and becomes an experience on its own. Through the attentive gazes of these artists one sees the things that time only reveals later.
