Drowned Neon Rose

 

Beauty is important in the face of ruin, death, and disaster.

 

Storytelling is important in an age of lies, misinformation and flooded libraries.

 

Right now I am looking for a wary and embattled beauty, the title drawn from a combination of “Drowned World” and “Oh Rose thou art sick,” layered in what I feel is contemporary color, neon pink and yellow, though it is kind of dirty.  We all have this kind of sinking feeling, but many of these works feel like narratives of survival, privacy, intimacy, ordinary suburban sadness.  I’m looking for hope in the ruin and collapse, a prefiguring of a way forward.

 

Many of the situations are candlelit, fire lit or sustain their own light through color or flora.  Art should emit light.

 

Neon is important.  I know a lot of it is fugitive, but it feels right, especially since this is a screen show.

 

There is a kind of overheated plastic wonder even to the scenes that seem normal, as if we are witnessing them from the future, wistfully.  What do we want to keep, what do we already mourn, what should we image now before we lose it? 

 

Many objects gathered, recorded, left strewn about, remembering.  Our futurism is bent with melancholy, our objects sing songs long after us while we look at them.  Each still life feels filled with rubble, but we are still finding things underneath, moss growing in sludge.

 

I curated for a mood, gothic but neon, Spanish moss-covered, dank romantic. A flooded floating world.  I curated for high skill but also for labor, I like things that look labored over and invested in, I think that adds to their talismanic worth, their secret power is time with human hands and minds.

 

If the scene seems cheerful, there is a kind of snarling darkness underneath.  Are they using candles for fun?  Is that poodle about to bite or catch? 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing all the work together as a group and there were many more submissions I wanted to include, literally shows more, but I was curating for mood and a kind of dark humor.  I think more shows should be curated with this wide-open call approach on the internet, I feel like I’ve seen so many different things and I am so grateful to you all for sharing your work with me.

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Juror Kirstin Lamb February 2020