‘Cosmic Harmonics’ @ Sapling Gallery
In the heart of Mayfair in London, Charlotte Call has recently opened Sapling Gallery. The exhibition space promotes established artists and emerging talents carefully selected from the Contemporary art world. The gallery's name is a direct reference to its unique concept of embracing broader current issues, such as the dialogue between art, human, and nature. Works of art and plants, placed inside and outside the gallery, constantly interact, creating an environment open to a renewed relationship between art and life.
Sinusoidal oscillation and harmonic dances break up the perception of the sensitive world and reveal cosmic universes in which sound movement takes shape, creating games of rhythm and color. Between the organic and the mechanical, perfection and error, Eddie Rusha's art expands and contracts intangible elements of human perception such as the sound, the rhythm and the flow of time. His practice ranges from works on canvas and paper to video installations and sound performances, encapsulating Op Art and the Light and Space Movement influences of the Californian coast, where he was born and is currently based.
Alibi. Acrylic on canvas board 30.5 x 30.5cm, 2016. Source: Sapling Gallery.
Entering the gallery space curated by Cedric Bardawil, a series of works on canvas, each 30.5 x 30.5 cm occupies the left wall. The paintings, made between 2016 and 2019, are telescopes that reveal absurd, hallucinated worlds of impossible architectures in which the unconscious emerges through a free association of images. Surrealist elements join the Escherian influences in the presence of emblematic components. As in Large Egg #3, he involves and associates enigmatic elements that recur in art history like the eggs and the sphere, symbols of perfection and absolute regularity.
Large Egg #3. Acrylic on canvas board 30.5 x 30.5cm, 2016. Source: Sapling Gallery.
However, using a spray gun technique, Ruscha breaks the occidental search for the perfect, which the artist defines as boring and finite. Highlighting imperfection as an essential element within his works, the viewer becomes aware of their almost invisible irregularity. The flow of time and the things in it, return to Ruscha's latest production of works on paper created in occasion of the exhibition. Natural fractals of concentric or symmetrical compositions occupy the other two walls of the gallery, generating visual rhythms potentially capable of repeating themselves in their form at different scales.
Forty Little Mothers. Acrylic on paper 43 x 36cm, 2021. Source: Sapling Gallery.
In Forty Little Mothers, the series is inspired by the kaleidoscopic on-screen performances of the musical choreographer and the film director Busby Berkeley. Video and music are both essential components of Ruscha's artistic production. The airbrush technique of these works is a reference to the ancient synthesizer Theremin, an instrument that does not require contact with the musician to produce melodies. A video installation on-screen, in which the fractal elements come to life and generate symmetrical compositions and then disperse into the black background, attracts the viewer with its psychedelic rhythm. Accompanied by the recording of a music performance, Secret Circuit closes the exhibition, transporting the visitor into Eddie Ruscha’s hallucinatory reality, on the border between surreal visions and natural fractals.
Secret Circuit. Series of drawings animated in Rorschach (HD 1920 x 1280) Duration 41m29s. 2021. Source: Sapling Gallery.
Cosmic Harmonies is on view at Sapling Gallery until 7th August 2021. For further information visit the website.
All images courtesy of Sapling Gallery.
Greta Caldera
Contributing Writer, MADE IN BED