Backscatter

Backscatter brings together artworks that serve as transmissions of largely ineffable, perhaps transcendental, experiences that occur during moments of stillness, observation, and introspection. They embody the effects of not just noticing, but reveling in, fleeting glimmers of light that have travelled from inconceivably distant realms to flicker at the threshold of our consciousness; and of listening attentively to the ancestral murmurs and revelations that may awaken within us while we are quietly captivated by the dazzle.

The works in Backscatter lead us to contemplate larger themes of mortality, equilibrium, and the blurred edges of the “self” by interweaving spectacular processes of natural and chemical changes of forms in with speculative images of fluidity and otherworldliness.

Throughout the exhibition, themes of fragmentation, disintegration, patina, and crystallization recur. Ephemeral site-specific installations, by Joetta Maue and Katherine Mitchell DiRico, document and harness visual light phenomena as methods to explore time and perception. Funlola Coker, Jesse Kaminsky, Leah Piepgras, and Esther Solondz create sculptures that engage in various transmutations: of culture, memory, materials, and the human body. Joetta Maue’s drawings remind us of the humble and precarious nature of our daily existence, as she meticulously renders images of cosmic dust, and floor sweepings, alternately, with ink on black paper.  

Each piece in the show emerges from a practice steeped in time, presence, and a curiosity about unnoticed or transitory occurrences. 

In a time of overstimulation and existential overwhelm, Backscatter invites viewers into moments of quiet wonder and introspection, offering opportunities to recalibrate and make space for reflection and connection.

– Alicia Rendette, curator

“These sculptures evoke slippery, liminal spaces – dream-like and half-remembered, yet sacred. From a Yoruba perspective, I consider how objects can transport one through time and nostalgia. For me, the act of chiseling, carving, and braiding are connected to memory: digging to reveal, automatic movements of the body connect to shared histories and cultural experiences.” 

–  Funlola Coker Read more about Funlola Coker

“Iridescence and light function as primary sites to explore these thresholds of [perceived] realities. A shimmer in the distance, at once a gum wrapper and an insect’s wing—flits in and out of focus, eclipsing understanding.  Iridescence asks us to take a closer look, and multiplies in depth as we ourselves move around and through it—a screen or a portal that suddenly becomes opaque or dark.  What was once visible, becomes invisible.” Katherine Mitchell DiRico  Read more about Katherine Mitchell DiRico

“What things can your body do without you? You can grow a baby or a tumor. You can also do all the secret things that life requires like metabolize a sandwich. All these important things being done by you are running on automatic, deep inside and behind the scenes. Even looking in at them will ruin the whole process. What parts of you do you even really know? Perhaps only a thin, hollow layer of skin that you can decorate or rearrange. Have you seen wind push ripples across the thin surface of water like two yous moving across each other?”

– Jesse Kaminsky Read more about Jesse Kaminsky

“Through photographic practice, I map the space that light travels from the sun to the surfaces of kitchen tables and walls. The dust, that is both ourselves and the stars, falls through the air of my children's rooms and into the corners of hallways, becoming my subject. In my drawings, I use observational abstraction to connect the smallness of humanity to the vast cosmos. In my installations, photographs of the form of light shapes overlap with actual light in the space, speaking to the momentary nature of our lives and how time collapses.” 

– Joetta Maue Read more about Joetta Maue

“In my work, I ask what it would be like to come into being as a cloud or other shifts in consciousness or even as just the outer shell of being? How would we slip through space and time? What form would we take? I marvel at our fragile physical form and our abstraction of time and space that relates only to our human scale. The physicist Carlo Rovelli writes all reality is interaction. Through my process, I look at how our bodies interact within a cosmic timeline of the natural world and the universe, and how we flow through it in all our forms.”

–Leah Piepgras Read more about Leah Piepgras

“My way of working… I would liken it to gardening, where you plant seeds and then patiently wait for things to happen, (or not happen). In the end, it is the search for something pure, the search for something transcendent within the corporeal world. Salt is one of the temporal and fragile materials that I have experimented with for many years. Salt in supersaturated solution will grow onto various substrates. It will wick and grow to form stalactites and it will form crystals on structures and in glass cylinders.”

–Esther Solondz Read more about Esther Solondz