The Gap is happy to current Herbivore, the gallery’s summer time group exhibition. This plant-forward present gathers artists whose works characteristic flora in all its kinds: flowering, fruiting, sprouting and climbing. From succulents to spores, Herbivore considers why artists so typically flip to the botanical world—what it represents, what it absorbs, and what prospects it holds when figuration falters.
Throughout media, the present is lush and plentiful. British duo Graphic Rewilding develop an eruption of irises in our entrance home windows, welcoming guests into an area the place dwelling and representational vegetation intertwine. Refracting mild throughout our backyard within the entry gallery are a large resin flower by Ben Godward and bulbous glass vases blown by Hanna Hansdotter. Barry McGee’s animatronic tree sculpture tags the gallery wall like a domesticated plant going rogue. Sophie Parker weaves stay vegetation into her sculptural set up, whereas Hein Koh’s ceramic sculpture sprouts a large cactus out of a smoking broccoli pot. Later this month a efficiency piece by Kembra Pfahler will characteristic flowers from an much more stunning location.
Some works in Herbivore experience abundance: Ant Hamlyn’s Sporegasm, a cluster of sentimental mushrooms, teems with plush fecundity whereas Theo Rosenblum’s absurdly hung chair sculpture of a large weed leaf asks us to take plant intercourse (and furnishings) much less critically. Kevin Christy, Ariana Hughes, and Carly Owen Weiss bear fruits, whereas Caroline Larsen, Nathan Ritterspusch, Pedro Pedro and Vanessa Prager overflow with florals in dense, painterly element.
The botanical style you can name it, although it hovers someplace within the overlap of nonetheless life and panorama: Andy Dixon Purple Composition with Pomegranite gives an actual homage to the masters of nonetheless life in a sizzling pastel pastiche. Laurens Legiers (above) presents small, perplexing work the place geometric thickets of stippled foliage obscure a standard outdated master-style panorama. Is he exhibiting how floor and design have overtaken historical past and style—or just letting his uniquely lovely paint software technique steal focus?
In our previous thematic exhibitions like Nature Morte (2021), which revisited the nonetheless life, and Manscaping (2022), targeted on panorama tropes, we noticed how artists return to conventional genres to not repeat them, however to subvert and reanimate. A plant is a topic that carries symbolic weight however permits for formal play—a stand-in for the human determine when a human may say an excessive amount of—a construction of magnificence or a vessel for drama.
Vegetation is the substrate of our dwelling world—xylem and phloem or gigantic underground mycelium shifting unseen beneath the floor— its cycles mirroring our personal. It’s why our sick cultural second calls for we “contact grass.” In Herbivore, the artists lean into that reality not as naturalists, however as stylists and symbolists, inviting us to look intently and bathe our retinas in therapeutic inexperienced.
