The exhibition will be on view from June 9 to July 15, 2016. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, June 9, from 6 to 8 PM.
The word “heliotrope” names at least two particular things in the world: a popular garden plant that turns its purple flowers toward the sun; and a mirrored instrument once used by land surveyors to reflect sunlight across long distances. As the title of a summer group show, the word is being creatively misread to encompass an array of visual motifs that address the sun and explore its numerous attributes.
In some of the works on display the sun appears in familiar pictorial guises – as a disc, an orb, a spray of radiance. In the hands of other artists, the sun is referenced obliquely, through its manifold effects on our terrestrial realm – warmth, illumination, rotation, nourishment. The formal and metaphorical range of the works is wide, and is matched by a diversity of materials and processes, including novel approaches to painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture. As such, Heliotropes not only confirms the obvious centrality of the sun to our earthly existence, but also speaks to its otherworldly resistance to full comprehension and singular representation.
Matthew Nichols is Associate Professor of art history at Christie’s Education, New York.
