In large-scale, elaborate oil work of highly effective, glowing creatures, Martin Wittfooth explores the timeless cycles and forces of nature in a celebration of the elegant. Recognized for his enigmatic and atmospheric depictions of untamed animals in dystopian settings, the artist blends conventional European portray strategies with important up to date considerations surrounding the human affect on the atmosphere.
Wittfooth’s new solo exhibition, Deus Ex Terra at Corey Helford Gallery, options 19 new oil work on canvas, linen, or wooden panels. Some take the type of tondos 18 to 24 inches in diameter, whereas others assume huge proportions, like “Duel,” a diptych that spans 12 ft large. The stallion additionally seems as an everyday embodiment of elemental forces, like in “Facet of Hearth” or “Facet of Air,” by which silhouettes of highly effective horses fabricated from molten rock or clouds of steam rear up into towering positions.
The present’s title, Deux Ex Terra, loosely interprets to “god out of the earth.” It’s a nod to the traditional Greek and Roman phrase deux ex machina, which describes a dramatic or literary system by which a personality or a “god” is launched into the plot to resolve a seemingly insolvable battle. Throughout a play, the character can be launched through a crane, therefore the “machine.” Wittfooth flips this notion again to nature and the basic forces of the earth—climate, orbits, the seasons, life, water—to discover cyclical, self-sustaining rhythms.
“The Airtight maxim, ‘As above, so beneath; As inside, so with out,’ has echoed by centuries of philosophical, mystical, and inventive inquiry,” the gallery says. “In Deus ex Terra, this precept serves as a guiding thread, illuminating the methods nature repeats its patterns throughout scale and time: within the branching of rivers and the veins of leaves, within the spiral of galaxies and the coiling of shells, within the cyclical turning of seasons and the rhythms of breath and heartbeat.”
In earlier work, Wittfooth targeting the strained relationship between people and nature, with its results revealed within the type of piles of plastic or shorn tree trunks. In his present work, he displays on the instinctive and enduring sides of nature—the “historical rhythms that prevail regardless of our human tumult,” the gallery says. “In a time of deep cultural and ecological upheaval, these work supply an invite to acknowledge, to recollect, and maybe to heal.”
Deus Ex Terra opens tomorrow and continues by October 4 in Los Angeles. Discover extra on the artist’s web site and Instagram.
