How To Escape A Whirlpool

Noel W. Anderson, Claudia Bitrán, Laura Collins, Jackson Daughety, Anna Pederson, Katherine Sepúlveda, Aaron Michael Skolnick, Orli Swergold The Kravets Wehby Gallery is pleased to present How To Escape a Whirlpool, a group exhibition co-organized by Emily Saltman and Hannah Studnick. To obsess is to love and be loved. A feedback loop with no end. Ouroboros, if we may evoke this cliche of an ironclad writhing ring, one only broken by the ability to let go. Obsession can be seen as devotion, or the tipping point into something more sinister. Idolization versus fetishization, passion versus madness. It would be wrong to say that to love is to be addicted to thinking about someone or something— seems reductive. Fixation can consume an individual and it can become a cultural phenomenon. The big toe of the statue of St. Peter, degraded by adoration. Love can change the texture of bronze. That is one reason why art exists. For these artists, obsession is something applied and directed towards the practice of making, painting, transforming, object collecting. It is equal parts talent and compulsion. A tireless investigation of self and form, trying to figure out a lover or opponent, by repetition, and leaning in. Katherine Sepúlveda’s large format neon altars enmesh with mind map collage, magnifying kitsch and making memory. Layered thin and precise wisps of oil paint ground down into a recognizable figure, then another, less recognizable, arguably more important in this context, the artist himself, Aaron Michael Skolnick. To obsess is to invent a version of something never realized. A world unto itself. And yet our recommendation is still surrendering to the cause. Allow the message and the medium to consume. Dive into an abyss made far more interesting by the interest of the interested. The current is weakest at the very bottom.