Of Orchids and Wasps
04 Mar - 15 Apr 2023
Alexander Carver, Taína Cruz, Brett Ginsburg, Birke Gorm, Ursula Schulze-Bluhm, Rosario Zorraquín
Of Orchids and Wasps presents works by Alexander Carver, Taína Cruz, Brett Ginsburg, Birke Gorm, Ursula Schulze-Bluhm and Rosario Zorraquín that explore various perceptions of materiality, spirituality and technology, the entanglement of the mechanical and the natural, transcending and frolicking, labor and humor. By creating a web of content, each position links to the others in a subtle complexity, allowing for a multiplicity of approaches and entry points. The works form tangible material narratives that hold equal significance as artistic discourse and exhibition making.
One of Brett Ginsburg’s conceptual curiosities is entomology, and the influence that evolutionary biology has on the development of technology. Ginsburg’s paintings reject a binary classification of the natural world and machinery as polarizing entities, instead emphasizing their enmeshment. Single Surface Code, 2023 can be read as a cryptic mix of machinery and the biological impetus which has informed industrial development. Although the polished and refined surfaces of Brett Ginsburg's paintings, which are, contrary to their appearance, hand painted, may conflict with Birke Gorm's use of organic materials, their works are complementary explorations of industrialized labor. While Ginsburg approaches the subject matter from a technical and mechanical standpoint, Gorm's employment of natural material offers a similar artistic examination of the same theme. The adjacency of the works in space divulge and reinforce the industrial application of these materials— IOU, 2021 and I CAN SMILE AT THE PAST no.11 (The Pagan Woman), 2022 by Birke Gorm appears folkloric and mischievous, yet simultaneously refer to an era in which its materials, jute, wood and burlap, had an industrial application.
Carver’s paintings on this elaborate web of meshed content, offer a perspective on the passage of time and its effect on industrialized society, as in The Spinning Wheel (Ribboned Flesh), 2023 a human is victimized by a breaking wheel. Carver’s concurrent use of analogue methods such as frottage, and the digital aesthetic of the pixelated texture which punctuate the painting’s surface, produces transhistorical imagery. His painterly process is deeply self analyzed and inspected, as he treats the canvas as a membrane, as does Rosario Zorraquín, whose mystical paintings, at first glance, seem antithetical to Carver’s contorted depictions of figures. Zorraquín treats the linen gauze onto which she paints as skin, subjecting it to a series of rites of portraying, she conducts the readings which precede her painting. The fabric is wrapped around the subjects of her mores, and doused in water before being painted and drawn on, often written on in the language she has developed over the course of her liturgical practice, the Glosario. The fabric, as if it were a skin which carries scars and memories of its body’s experience, is embedded with the revelations of shamanistic rituals. Margarite, 2020, represents the corporeal and mystical poles of Zorraquín’s practice. Her readings, which are a social practice in addition to being foundational to the creation of her paintings, formulate the translation of a physical body onto the fabric. Zorraquín traces and marks upon the individual, enclosed in the thin membrane of the linen gauze. As such, the painting’s indexical relationship to the body is established, and furthermore, the readings, in which she asks the subject to name the work, creates space for fiction. In the case of Margarite, the title of the work was the namesake of a beloved character from a book.
Ursula Schulze-Bluhm’s drawings are mystical, as she, as a writer and poet, crafts elaborate depictions of nature which serve as allegories for the body. Ursula’s surreal and psychedelic works act as portals to worlds she has built, inventing new mythology. In Mind Map 2023: Wake up call, 2023 Taína Cruz engages with fantasy and world building also, as her highly narrative practice is both fantastical and rooted in the real world. Cruz’s tableau of mystical creatures. Mind Map 2023: Wake up call abounds with content, the central figure is surrounded by both disjointed and interrelated scenes: a monstrous caricature of a capitalist holds a memo referencing the volcanic eruption in the horizon of the painting. The episodes within this work follow a concentric logic on the canvas, hence Cruz’s propensity towards non-linear narrative storytelling. Cruz’s environments are an amalgamation of
her personal contexts, and thus the works host the atmosphere of New York streets in Look'ere I picked this up on 125th, 2023, as well as contemporary artistic translation of ritualistic culture in others. As she is informed by the internet’s pictorial culture, her works collapse time and compile visual references, stripped from their initial context and recontextualized within Cruz’s imagined environments.
'The orchid and the wasp constitute one of these virtualities, two autonomous series that intersect on a line of flight, a rhizome that engenders two distinct becomings and carries their singularities to a threshold of intensity where they merge.’ A Thousand Plateaus’ (1980), by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Introduction: Rhizome
The figure of the Orchid and the Wasp is used by Deleuze and Guattari to explore interrelated concepts, such as the rhizome. The rhizome is distinguished by its cross-connections and serves as an alternative to conventional, uniform approaches to curation and academia, aimed at promoting a reconfiguring way of thinking. The intricate and specialized interdependence of Drakae Orchids and Thynnid Wasps¹, serves as a paradigm for biological coevolution and symbiosis. The two species share a mutually beneficial and ever-changing relationship that defies rigid boundaries and fixed classifications. By linking together, they underscore the importance of fluidity and perpetual metamorphosis in their partnership, hence diversity and collaboration. By adopting the rhizome as a framework of thought, Of Orchids and Wasps employs a kaleidoscopic, dialogic, and queer methodological approach, which shifts away the focus from chronology and synchronicity. The exhibition offers multiple signifying nodes that allow for a manifold of possible connections between the different artistic practices, underlining the multifaceted character of each specimen in the show.
Of Orchids and Wasps presents works by Alexander Carver, Taína Cruz, Brett Ginsburg, Birke Gorm, Ursula Schulze-Bluhm and Rosario Zorraquín that explore various perceptions of materiality, spirituality and technology, the entanglement of the mechanical and the natural, transcending and frolicking, labor and humor. By creating a web of content, each position links to the others in a subtle complexity, allowing for a multiplicity of approaches and entry points. The works form tangible material narratives that hold equal significance as artistic discourse and exhibition making.
One of Brett Ginsburg’s conceptual curiosities is entomology, and the influence that evolutionary biology has on the development of technology. Ginsburg’s paintings reject a binary classification of the natural world and machinery as polarizing entities, instead emphasizing their enmeshment. Single Surface Code, 2023 can be read as a cryptic mix of machinery and the biological impetus which has informed industrial development. Although the polished and refined surfaces of Brett Ginsburg's paintings, which are, contrary to their appearance, hand painted, may conflict with Birke Gorm's use of organic materials, their works are complementary explorations of industrialized labor. While Ginsburg approaches the subject matter from a technical and mechanical standpoint, Gorm's employment of natural material offers a similar artistic examination of the same theme. The adjacency of the works in space divulge and reinforce the industrial application of these materials— IOU, 2021 and I CAN SMILE AT THE PAST no.11 (The Pagan Woman), 2022 by Birke Gorm appears folkloric and mischievous, yet simultaneously refer to an era in which its materials, jute, wood and burlap, had an industrial application.
Carver’s paintings on this elaborate web of meshed content, offer a perspective on the passage of time and its effect on industrialized society, as in The Spinning Wheel (Ribboned Flesh), 2023 a human is victimized by a breaking wheel. Carver’s concurrent use of analogue methods such as frottage, and the digital aesthetic of the pixelated texture which punctuate the painting’s surface, produces transhistorical imagery. His painterly process is deeply self analyzed and inspected, as he treats the canvas as a membrane, as does Rosario Zorraquín, whose mystical paintings, at first glance, seem antithetical to Carver’s contorted depictions of figures. Zorraquín treats the linen gauze onto which she paints as skin, subjecting it to a series of rites of portraying, she conducts the readings which precede her painting. The fabric is wrapped around the subjects of her mores, and doused in water before being painted and drawn on, often written on in the language she has developed over the course of her liturgical practice, the Glosario. The fabric, as if it were a skin which carries scars and memories of its body’s experience, is embedded with the revelations of shamanistic rituals. Margarite, 2020, represents the corporeal and mystical poles of Zorraquín’s practice. Her readings, which are a social practice in addition to being foundational to the creation of her paintings, formulate the translation of a physical body onto the fabric. Zorraquín traces and marks upon the individual, enclosed in the thin membrane of the linen gauze. As such, the painting’s indexical relationship to the body is established, and furthermore, the readings, in which she asks the subject to name the work, creates space for fiction. In the case of Margarite, the title of the work was the namesake of a beloved character from a book.
Ursula Schulze-Bluhm’s drawings are mystical, as she, as a writer and poet, crafts elaborate depictions of nature which serve as allegories for the body. Ursula’s surreal and psychedelic works act as portals to worlds she has built, inventing new mythology. In Mind Map 2023: Wake up call, 2023 Taína Cruz engages with fantasy and world building also, as her highly narrative practice is both fantastical and rooted in the real world. Cruz’s tableau of mystical creatures. Mind Map 2023: Wake up call abounds with content, the central figure is surrounded by both disjointed and interrelated scenes: a monstrous caricature of a capitalist holds a memo referencing the volcanic eruption in the horizon of the painting. The episodes within this work follow a concentric logic on the canvas, hence Cruz’s propensity towards non-linear narrative storytelling. Cruz’s environments are an amalgamation of
her personal contexts, and thus the works host the atmosphere of New York streets in Look'ere I picked this up on 125th, 2023, as well as contemporary artistic translation of ritualistic culture in others. As she is informed by the internet’s pictorial culture, her works collapse time and compile visual references, stripped from their initial context and recontextualized within Cruz’s imagined environments.
'The orchid and the wasp constitute one of these virtualities, two autonomous series that intersect on a line of flight, a rhizome that engenders two distinct becomings and carries their singularities to a threshold of intensity where they merge.’ A Thousand Plateaus’ (1980), by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Introduction: Rhizome
The figure of the Orchid and the Wasp is used by Deleuze and Guattari to explore interrelated concepts, such as the rhizome. The rhizome is distinguished by its cross-connections and serves as an alternative to conventional, uniform approaches to curation and academia, aimed at promoting a reconfiguring way of thinking. The intricate and specialized interdependence of Drakae Orchids and Thynnid Wasps¹, serves as a paradigm for biological coevolution and symbiosis. The two species share a mutually beneficial and ever-changing relationship that defies rigid boundaries and fixed classifications. By linking together, they underscore the importance of fluidity and perpetual metamorphosis in their partnership, hence diversity and collaboration. By adopting the rhizome as a framework of thought, Of Orchids and Wasps employs a kaleidoscopic, dialogic, and queer methodological approach, which shifts away the focus from chronology and synchronicity. The exhibition offers multiple signifying nodes that allow for a manifold of possible connections between the different artistic practices, underlining the multifaceted character of each specimen in the show.