In "dARKagEs," Leon Alesi and John Mulvany aim to unearth, uncover and breathe new life into images and artifacts that until relatively recently may have seemed invisible, hidden, and unknowable. The artists’ use of the neologism Darkages as the title of the exhibition might seem to suggest that we are currently living through a new dark age - a time of ignorance, fear and oppression with a stagnation of advancement in science and culture. Our uncertainty about accelerated technological advancements in AI and our collective anxiety about the climate and the future hums in the background as context.
Alesi’s photographs, collages, assemblages and found objects embody a sophisticated folk-art sensibility suggestive of an imagined past that echoes into the present. As much an exercise of recording history as it is an experiment of alchemy. Alesi’s Ancestors series - remnants of cedar piers unearthed from the foundations of partially demolished houses in his neighborhood live again as sculptures that stand as witnesses to images depicting their own fall into obscurity and abandonment. For his assemblages, foraged detritus communes with the incorporeal and the previously unseen transforms into an Anthropocene Age avatar.
Mulvany’s paintings originate in extensive photographic research from Victorian-era natural history museums and West Texas taxidermy shops. Mulvany creates digital collages that embed taxidermy animals into contemporary landscape dioramas which are then reimagined through AI image generation technology. The animals in the paintings are approximations of life, evoking a sense of simultaneous presence and absence, permanence and transience, the real and the unreal.
Throughout the exhibition Alesi and Mulvany find common threads with which to collaborate, utilizing key elements of both artists’ themes and processes. The installation of a natural history museum-style diorama in the window of the gallery opens and completes the narrative.
Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until October 28.
In "dARKagEs," Leon Alesi and John Mulvany aim to unearth, uncover and breathe new life into images and artifacts that until relatively recently may have seemed invisible, hidden, and unknowable. The artists’ use of the neologism Darkages as the title of the exhibition might seem to suggest that we are currently living through a new dark age - a time of ignorance, fear and oppression with a stagnation of advancement in science and culture. Our uncertainty about accelerated technological advancements in AI and our collective anxiety about the climate and the future hums in the background as context.
Alesi’s photographs, collages, assemblages and found objects embody a sophisticated folk-art sensibility suggestive of an imagined past that echoes into the present. As much an exercise of recording history as it is an experiment of alchemy. Alesi’s Ancestors series - remnants of cedar piers unearthed from the foundations of partially demolished houses in his neighborhood live again as sculptures that stand as witnesses to images depicting their own fall into obscurity and abandonment. For his assemblages, foraged detritus communes with the incorporeal and the previously unseen transforms into an Anthropocene Age avatar.
Mulvany’s paintings originate in extensive photographic research from Victorian-era natural history museums and West Texas taxidermy shops. Mulvany creates digital collages that embed taxidermy animals into contemporary landscape dioramas which are then reimagined through AI image generation technology. The animals in the paintings are approximations of life, evoking a sense of simultaneous presence and absence, permanence and transience, the real and the unreal.
Throughout the exhibition Alesi and Mulvany find common threads with which to collaborate, utilizing key elements of both artists’ themes and processes. The installation of a natural history museum-style diorama in the window of the gallery opens and completes the narrative.
Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until October 28.
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Admission is free.
