Alchemically Yours

Ars, Scientia, Magia (2007) by Jesse Bransford.

Another art exhibition, and another group show at Observatory in Brooklyn, NYC, where some of my Lovecraft drawings were shown last year. Alchemically Yours is an alchemy-themed contemporary art show curated by Phantasmaphile‘s Pam Grossman, and she has this to say about the exhibition:

Like dreams, alchemy speaks in pictures. At first glimpse, alchemical manuscripts from the 16th and 17th centuries look like a panoply of hallucinations. They feature images of fornicating kings and queens. Suns and moons shining in stereo. Lions and serpents and eggs, oh my. Black and white and red all over. Secret codes and effulgent iconographies teeming with meaning, yet ultimately ineffable. These pictures beget picturing. They’re signs that beg to be resignified; to be reinterpreted and refined.

The participants in Alchemically Yours have done just that. Varying in medium and style, each piece in this exhibition pays homage to the alchemic tradition—all the while affirming that the artist fills the role of alchemist in the present-day. For who better can elevate the mundane, turn the sub- into the sublime? From the prima materia of color and canvas comes great and vivid work.

Caduceus (detail, 2011) by Robert M. Place.

The participating artists are Jesse Bransford, Molly Crabapple, Ted Enik, Marina Korenfeld, Adela Leibowitz, Sara Antoinette Martin, Ann McCoy, Robert M. Place, Ron Regé, Jr., J.L. Schnabel, Hunter Stabler, Panos Tsagaris.

Alchemically Yours opens on Saturday, May 7th, 2011, 7–10pm and will run from May 8th to June 12th, 2011.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Laurie Lipton’s Splendor Solis
• The Arms of the Art
• Splendor Solis
• Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae
• A Love Craft: Art Inspired by Monsters, Madness and Mythos
• Cabala, Speculum Artis Et Naturae In Alchymia
• Vision Quest
• Digital alchemy
• Fata Morgana: The New Female Fantasists