Quantum Matter, which closed at Matter Studio Gallery April 19, was a lush, exciting intermingly of five contemporary artists’ immersive work. The exhibition included multiple works in mixed media, oil and acrylic painting, collage, and sculpture by artists Susan Ossman, Angelica Sotiriou, Monica Marks, Karena Massengill, and Sandra Vista.
The exhibition explored each artist’s own unique vision of all things connected, great and small. As a scientific definition, quantum matter can be topological and refer to emergent order and exotic properties. These artists each expressed and experienced such, from the vastness of the lines, conjoined brush strokes, and brilliant hues of international artist Susan Ossman to the lush and intensely lovely abstract spiritual landscapes of Angelica Sotiriou to the landscapes of desert, raw earth, and sky of Monica Marks, these artists exhibit vast and fascinating vistas that speak to a rich accumulation of the proportional or quantum energy of the world. For sculptural artists Karena Massengill and Sandra Vista, matter is an infinite use of materials as diverse as beading and gourds for Vista and fine metal works in amazingly detailed shapes from Massengill.
Among the many standouts in the exhibition is Susan Ossman’s oil on canvas “Chergui,” left above, a rush of red wind and pastel light soaring in across the desert of a region, or perhaps a heart.
Also from Ossman is the glorious “One and Many,” a swirling conjoining of blue and orange that evokes the heart of a flower, the intertwined cosmic and natural world, and the conflicts and comparisions within each living being.
Monica Marks’ use of found materials both defines and enhances her work, which here features the language, losses, and love she finds and has for the desert. Her mixed media ” House with Green Trim” uses fragments of wood and metal found near the desert Wonder Valley, Calif. homestead which she has painted. She is fascinated by the abandoned dreams of desert homesteads, and treats these sites, and the remanents of objects such as Del Monte branded cans, with revererance. Small and lovely salvaged objects receive new life in color and form, such as the rainbow paints illuminating “Salvaged Traces Series 10” and the colors of the sunset that form the backdrop to the circles of crushed cans in “Sunset Circles.”
Like Marks, Karena Massengil often works with salvaged material, creating undulating and exciting metal sculptures such as “Billabong,” which depicts environmentally impacted birds, and is shaped from repurposed stainless steel, enamel, wood, mirror fragments and feathers. Leaves danced in a updraft in her “Joyful Dance,” a colorful stainless steel canvas utilizing oils. Always tantalizingly inventive, Massengil uses her work as a way to express both ecological concerns and political ones.
Vista also repurpsoes her wall sculptures, using zipper tabs to create wildly deep sculptural forms that have a deep and shimmering texture. The four long panels of “Museum Horizon” are skyscraper-like in shape, shimmery in gold and grounded in dark grey tabs. Her beaded gourds pay homeage to the death of a loved one; named for the southwest region they represent in style, these meticulously beaded works reflect upon characters such as “Pistachio Mary.”
Painter Angelica Sotiriou revels in light, the spiritual, and a passionate joy for and concern about the natural world. Her large scale, multi-layered canvases such as her acrylic work “Through a Glass Darkly #5” are filled with a luminosity that goes beyond the canvas and radiates. Like many of her works, the effect of her layers creates a kind of pearled opalesence. Smaller scale acrylic and mixed media works such as “Hiraeth #6” shine with rivulets of gold leaf in the presentation of a sanctified breath.
Jenny Hager’s colors are often bold and bright: lime green, canary yellow, electrifying orange. Working in lines, shapes, patterns, and “monsters and monuments” as she explains, the artist adds further depth and precision to her acyrlic work by taping the canvas. Hager’s appropriately named “Gang of Glee” is a burst of gold and pale purple that brings an explosion of pleasure to the viewer’s gaze. “Cascade” is a meadow of chatreuse through which dreams wade deep.
Each artist’s work is galvanizing on its own, but when combined, of course, the work becomes “quantum.” The quantum world may defy conventional logic, but creates its own, intense, magnetic language, as do the artists in this beautiful, seminal exhibition. The exploration of the visionary and the unseen, the massive in terms of emotion, brush stroke, sculpted forms, small elements made large when conjoined all comprises the mystical, magical work in this exhibition. The unexpected and the uncanny, the infinite and the minute are all encompassed in a collection of lustrous work.
While the exhibition is no longer viewable live, the works can be studied and purchased online.
- Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis
