Singing with light and strung from the ceiling, crunching on the floor, and draped over windows and walls, Durden and Ray offers a stunning immersive exhibition now through October 2nd in the Bendix Building.
Curated by Valerie Wilcox, The Big Embrace is just that, embracing mind, body, and spirit with curiosity and reverence – and the sense of transcending place and space.
This is one you must see in person. The three artist exhibition by Flora Kao, Rebecca Niederlander, and Amanda Yamashita is dazzling, snaking, weaving, and dangling around the gallery space.
Kao’s Hope is a luxurious tent of packaging twine and bamboo. Beneath the viewers feet, the bamboo crunches and heaves like soft, other-earthly ground. The artist says in her family’s language “the word for fishnet sounds the same as hope.” The woven canopy’s palette reflects Buddhist funeral tradition and a sacred color of enlightenment and freedom. Being within it offers an encompassing, golden sense of beauty
Niederlander uses plastic coated copper conduit to form sinuous and intersecting wire sculptures that are being individually sold to support social, legal and medical needs of transgendered people. The colors of the different wires represent different iterations of sexuality in her Wald-en. The lush puzzle piece sculptures represent a wide variety of gender representations – a forest of gender and peace. It’s kinetic and alive, with new shapes visible at every turn.
Yamashita’s Linked is a glittery hung snake of nylon filled with polyester fiberfill, and shimmering with sequins. It weaves to the edge of Kao’s work and slightly within Niederlander’s, forming a perfect connection. The artist says “as social creatures people long to feel connected to others…Linked explores connection in the form of a larger than life sequined chain…creating a cocooning effect.” It’s a rivetingly beautiful one, indeed.
Get connected, find hope, or lie back on pillows to contemplate the fascinating diversity of Wald-en. Hurry though.
Saturday’s only, or by appointment through October 2nd ONLY.
Durden and Ray is located at 1206 Maple #832 in the Fashion District.
- Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis