Bakehouse Art Complex | Swenson Gallery
January 6 – February 24, 2017
Opening Reception: January 13th, 2017 from 7 to 10PM
Judith Berk King | Enrique Gomez de Molina
With this exhibition the Bakehouse Art Complex launches its Baked-in-House series – a program aimed at showcasing recent work by one or more outstanding resident artists, often in dialogue with other creatives outside our organization.
Lessons in Post-Biology brings together BAC artist Judith Berk King’s and Enrique Gomez de Molina’s own bestiaries. From recognizable forms to abstraction, King’s figures resemble delicate, microscopic fossils. Her graphite drawings and digital collages are close in language to those of the first European explorers’ depictions of nature in the New World when imagination filled in the gaps between the known and the unknown. In contrast, Gomez de Molina presents exuberant species where furs, feathers, leathers and other parts of animals that exist today are combined with the mastery of a taxidermist. They are surreal and yet seem to be ready to come alive at any minute.
These new species carry the feeling of the old Cabinets of Curiosities, evading classification. Given the many changes in our natural environment, one wonders if tomorrow’s world will be inhabited by King’s and Gomez de Molina’s post-biology imaginations.