“With diverse approaches and modes of entry, the works in the exhibition explore and represent various states of consciousness – from expressing what is seen or is “real,” to what is imagined and conjured. The exhibition highlights works that ask us to slow down and observe, to notice discomfort, and explore the in-between space of dissociation and presence. With varying materials explorations, including painting, photography, and mixed-media sculpture, artists exhibit how ritual, memory, a relationship to the natural world, can awaken us from the dream of existence.” — Adam Liam Rose

Featuring the work of Elliot Avis, Loren Eiferman, Jeong Hur, Kieren Jeane, Sidney Mullis, Nola Parker, Kelsey Skordal, and Chelsea Wrightson.

Sidney Mullis
Purple Bush With Knuckle, 2021.
Sand, wood, paint, string, handmade
paper pulp (made primarily from kid’s
construction paper), and gravestone dust
(collected from a gravestone carver),
54 x 54 x 62 in. (137.16 x 137.16 x 157.48 cm)⁠.

Mullis is currently building a make-believe forest that is the resurrection space for her childhood self. By building this invented ceremonial landscape, she tries to find where childhood selves go in adulthood and ask whether it is possible to remember, re-enliven, and retain their childlike attributes. Her handmade paper pulp is created with kid’s construction paper mixed with gravestone dust that she collected from a gravestone carver. Second-hand teddy bears have been preserved upside down on their heads using layers of candle wax, inviting the choice to light and let them go or not light and keep them and the childhoods they symbolize intact.

Jeong Hur
Confession, 2021.
Archival pigment print,
30 x 20 in.⁠ (76.2 x 50.8 cm.).

“A long time ago, my counselor suggested that I try looking back on my life as an audience member, as if I were watching a movie. From that perspective, I viewed my life as the plot and thought of myself and the people in my life as characters. At first, familiar situations featuring an actor like me felt overindulged, and this shook my feelings. From negative emotions, such as frustration, defeat, and jealousy, to positive emotions like contentment in success, I felt them all rush at me at once.”

— Jeong Hur

 Loren Eiferman
50r.
78 pieces of wood pastel and linseed oil,
46 x 20 x 12 in.⁠ (116.84 x 50.8 x 30.48 cm.).

 Elliot Avis
The Wizard, 2020.
Oil and acrylic on stretched canvas,
on concrete and crayon covered tube T.V.,
48 x 72 in.⁠ (121.92 x 182.88 cm.).

“The Wizard started out as an idea at the beginning of Covid when I was thinking about how fragile our civilization is and all of the creative ways that our current civilization could be destroyed, ranging from events like a pandemic to a supervolcano. I got the T shape from ancient slabs with reliefs that depict mythologies from early civilization; I also like that they sort of look like giant t-shirts. This particular painting is imagining a story of a plague and the circus that surrounds it. The common folk are forced to work and dance in their illness, while those more fortunate can sit in their bubbles and use their magic. Of course, this fantastical story is nothing more than a cartoon blip on the cosmic background radiation shown through the static of the concrete-encased T.V."

— Elliot Avis

Kelsey Skordal
The Lineup, 2021.
Acrylic and wax pastels on canvas.

“In my work I visualize the feeling of remembering something half-forgotten, with hazy details and an uncertainty about what is real and what is misremembered. Scenes are layered atop one another like memories fading in and out of our minds; behind the image of the girls on the dock is the faint outline of an arm reaching upwards and a figure falling towards the water.”

— Kelsey Skorsdal