Giorgio Van Meerwijk and Larissa Lockshin are two artists united by their approach to materials. Their duo exhibition, Still There Are Seeds To Be Gathered embraces the raw physicality of their work whilst also considering the transformation and reinterpretation of their materials.
Van Meerwijk presents sculpture that evokes actions of gathering and transforming. Further exploring the idea of the receptacle, he is interested in how these narratives that Ursual le Guin is describing in her essay ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ (1986), shape a way of seeing and interacting with our surroundings. Van Meerwijk explores this through his use of materials, mixing artificial and natural materials in some works and embracing the original materiality in others. His sculptures feel at once nostalgic and natural whilst also being architectural and process-based. They seek to contradict in their shape and texture, conjuring a feeling of the unknown.
Van Meerwijk’s sculpture bounces off Lockshin’s enigmatic paintings, where abstraction of color using charcoal and matt pigment are mapped onto satin. Her paintings draw on landscapes from the 19th and early 20th century and consider paintings as objects over image content. Repossessing a gender associated material typically used for dressmaking, Lockshin paints on unprimed satin to allow for breaks of light to adorn the shiny fabric’s surface. Her paintings subtly move off their surfaces, creating tension and engaging the viewer from multiple viewpoints. Hand-carved frames snake and surround the picture plane, speaking in dialogue with Van Meerwijk’s own woodwork.
Both Van Meerwijk and Lockshin allow the character of their materials to keep their original nature as well as absorb new shapes and interpretation. Their work individually engages with the viewer. Van Meerwijk’s undefined sculptural shapes require you to be in front of them to understand the image they create, or the realisation of the presence of the mosaic. Lockshin’s shimmering landscapes similarly force their viewer around multiple vantage points to understand them entirely. Painting, drawing and sculpture collide as these two artists engage with their unique materials within a container of a multitude of sacred things.
Larissa Lockshin (b. 1992, Toronto, Canada) lives and works in Queens, New York. Lockshin earned her BFA from Parsons the New School for Design in 2014 and had her first solo exhibition in 2015 at Johannes Vogt Gallery, New York. She has since had solo shows in Brussels, Tucson, Portland and New York, and has featured in institutional exhibitions at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama (2017) and the American Institute of Thoughts and Feelings, Tucson (2019).
