Dissociation (dressed as small game trophy)

Exhibit runs January 5 - February 4

Opening reception: Friday January 5 from 7-9pm

Open gallery hours with Lexi Arrietta and exhibit curator Kanchan Balsé: Wednesday January 31 from 6-8pm

Artist talk: Saturday February 3 at 3pm

Open during all events, or email us to schedule a different time to view

LEXI ARRIETTA
The Doubling Woods

The Doubling Woods beckons viewers to a liminal place where they glimpse the growth and dilapidation of emotional lifeforms abandoned to their own devices. The artist fuses elements of nature with objects and remnants of human life, creating a material intersection that often obscures the maker’s hand, evoking the sense of happening upon something reverent in the woods—something that feels both otherworldly and familiar. 

Relics of loss, attachment, understanding, and instability unburden themselves within a sensitized wilderness that is simultaneously volatile, delicate, and fecund. Soil pools in the open neck of a blouse, while corners of a cuff and collar rear up, as if re-germinated. The face of a locking wardrobe drawer is camouflaged by the flesh-toned, papery bark of a river birch. Sisal fiber has been tenderly formed to resemble a single blonde braid, which emerges from a piece of driftwood and coils gracefully onto a pockmarked platter. Clusters of wild fungi flourish among the folds of vagrant garments.

The Doubling Woods moves its viewers to consider the connection between the wilderness of nature and the wilderness of the mind. It invites deepened understandings of how grief, trauma, and unmet needs can push us to the outskirts of our own lives—how our minds and emotional organs create new ecosystems in order to cope with and process new fathoms of feeling.

The Wood’s Edge Loses Itself (Memory Reinhabited)