Karey Kessler

September 7– 30, 2023

Opening / First Thursday Art Walk: September 7, 5-8pm
Artist Talk: September 23, 4pm
Closing/meet the artist: September 30, 2pm-4pm

The title of this show, this underlying structure, refers to the possibility of an invisible scaffolding that holds up the universe — an intangible essence existing beneath the more familiar structures of the visible world. I paint about this current moment of climate change anxiety and explore the entangled ways in which my mind, time, and place are deeply interconnected.

In my last body of work, Solastalgia, I drew imaginary contour lines on mulberry paper and layered them with watercolor and words about vanishing wilderness, the passage of time, and the vastness of the universe.

These new paintings are more painterly and gestural. For this series, I painted on traditional watercolor paper that allows for more dripping and blending than the mulberry paper. The end of covid restrictions and the expansion of where I can travel and be in public spaces affected this body of work.

My work plays with the fact that the Hebrew word for ‘the Place,’ ha-Makom, is also used as a name for God. In my paintings, “here” can be a specific, known physical place, or it can be an infinite conceptual space—a spiritual realm— an underlying structure of our world.