The Yancey Richardson Gallery presents through May 7th, Understory, an exhibition of new photographs by Sharon Core exploring the theater of growth, decay and predation in a cultivated closed landscape environment created by the artist. The stage for these works is a large geodesic dome constructed by Core on her property in the Hudson Valley. The environment serves not only as a vivarium for plant, reptile, amphibian and insect life, but also as a living studio – one containing an elaborate staging of the conceit of art as the mirror of nature.
In her earlier series of still lifes Early American and 1606 – 1907, Core examined the play between photographic truth and painted illusion. In Understory she looks beyond the frame, outward and downward into the environment itself. Teeming with shrubs, vines, weeds, exotic and native cultivars along with decomposing wood, mosses, insects, snails and creatures collected from Coreʼs adjoining forest, the dome provides a platform on which Core acts as curator, constructing a landscape simultaneously natural and artificial. The botanical elements such as the fig tree, datura, passiflora and opium poppy, go beyond the decorative, selected instead for their biblical references and psychotropic properties that allude to their inherent power to expand consciousness.
EXHIBITION
Sharon Core, Understory
From March 24 to May 7, 2016
The Yancey Richardson Gallery
525 W 22nd St
New York, NY 10011
United States
Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 6pm
[email protected]
http://www.yanceyrichardson.com
