Featuring: Sarah Kurz, Iris Lan, Kristina Libby and Julia Whitney Barnes
Curated by: Melinda Wang
Equity Gallery is pleased to announce Sans Toi, a group exhibition featuring works by Sarah Kurz, Iris Lan, Kristina Libby, and Julia Whitney Barnes. The exhibition is curated by Melinda Wang, an independent curator and a former executive director of New York Artists Equity and Equity Gallery. It will be on view from April 6-30, 2022, with a public opening reception on Thursday, April 7, 6-8pm.
Anticipation. What ifs. Anxiety. Time suspended. Two years into a global pandemic and now living under the dark clouds of war, we’re caught in a liminal space of waiting for what’s next while confronting our own mortality. The artists in the exhibition bring us new perspectives of memento mori and the imbuing of beauty into reminders of the inevitability of death. Through painting, film, sculpture and music, the works help us process the world around us, understand the passage of time and perhaps conjure a call to action.
Sarah Kurz’s paintings investigate stream-of-consciousness moments when memory and reality coalesce. Capturing the feeling of being caught in the moment, and the mystery of whether a visual memory is imagined or real, these paintings create a swirl of thoughts about longing, beauty, death and the passage of time. Iris Lan explores litanies as memento mori. Her composition, “Prelude: Litany,” recalls petitionary prayer and the imagery of snow and dust as a meditation on Ecclesiastes (“For everything there is a season”). She performs Jehan Alain’s ardent response to a time of distress and Maurice Durufle’s tribute to Alain and his last moments as he faced death in World War II. Kristina Libby’s works are an invitation to process grief by connecting with one another. “Heartbleed'' honors the lives lost during the pandemic, with each fallen rose petal representing one American we have lost and becoming a storm of red as we recall our collective trauma. Her bone and floral sculptures remind us of the mutualistic relationship among the organic, the ephemeral and the eternal. The beauty of Julia Whitney Barnes’s painted cyanotype flower works is immediately apparent with their saturated colors and engaging composition. Upon closer look, the flowers are ghost-like -- capturing both “light” and “death” as the cut flowers will soon be discarded. Only the flowers’ images remain; they are a permanent symbol of the subjects’ impermanence.
Each artist gives us layers of emotions and contradictions to examine and understand, while also offering us the opportunity to reflect. “Beauty” is transformed from physical beauty to the beauty of a deeper understanding of our own mortality. A memento mori illuminates and inspires. How will you live your life today?
“Sans Toi” is the theme song of Agnes Varda’s film, “Cleo from 5 to 7,” a memento mori that explores beauty, authenticity, existentialism and French feminism through the vehicle of liminal space.
Image: Sarah Kurz, Your Image of Me (2021), oil on linen, 16 x 22 inches