GROUP EXHIBITION

Curated by Michael Slenske, Water & Flower underscores the transient beauty of our constructedenvironments amidst an era of decline. Through narrative watercolors, the reckless allure of floralconstructions and deteriorating waterways are unveiled, portraying them as spaces of folly and failure.Oil paintings and ceramics envision fantastical flora and fauna emerging from utopian, dystopian, andPop landscapes. The exhibition also captures the essence of SoCal pool culture, reflecting on howthese repositories of leisure and introspection simultaneously embody desolation and decadence in aperiod of drought and fire.

The exhibition also features totemic and kinetic sculptures with open and closed water—and sound—systems that serve as mediums to contemplate alternative realities for these vital resources. As MikeDavis astutely observed, ‘The best place to view Los Angeles of the next millennium is from the ruinsof its alternative future.’ Between the spaces of those future ruins, Water & Flower is a vantage pointto re-examine our life-sustaining utilities, contemplating LA’s abundant yet scarce resources sointricately linked with the overburdened systems that support us. In doing so, it beckons us to look atthe delicate balance between human ingenuity and the natural world, the sacred and the sublime,urging us to find harmony in the chaos of our post-modern existence.

Press release courtesy Wilding Cran Gallery