Elemental

Exhibition Statement

13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present Elemental, featuring the work of Lynda Schlosberg and Naoe Suzuki. Elemental connects two artists who share a desire to peel back the layers of nature and human perception to reveal fundamental truths at the heart of reality. Using processes of digital abstraction and intuitive mark making, Schlosberg and Suzuki deconstruct the world around us and then rebuild it through intricate and engaging imagery.

Schlosberg’s abstract paintings begin with photographs that are digitally altered to provide a source for the abstract fields of color that form the basis of her paintings. Her canvases are populated with thousands of meticulous brushstrokes, which she arranges in the composition using a set of self-imposed rules. Although Schlosberg works exclusively with flat, opaque paints, her highly layered panels vibrate with depth and movement. Through her process of abstraction, Schlosberg evokes the atomic energies that pervade the universe, showing us the energetic connections that unite everyone and everything.

Suzuki’s Intueri and No Matter series perform similar acts of deconstruction, exposing what lies beneath human interactions with nature and each other. Suzuki’s Intueri drawings developed through a process of instinctive drawing: she placed her pen in the center of the page and allowed the imagery to grow organically. In Latin, intueri means “to look inside.” Suzuki’s vigorous images contain writhing masses that evoke intestines, cellular structures, or systems of roots, challenging her viewers to consider what we are made of. In her No Matter series Suzuki uses water, another one of her primary artistic concerns, to create abstract images that she combines with text to playfully challenge the superficiality of human communication.

Schlosberg and Suzuki approach their art with the mind of a scientist, using different abstract processes to examine the world and propose new and intriguing ways to understand it. Their resulting work is as intellectually engaging as it is visually captivating, daring the viewer to interrogate their perceptions.