‘Forest Bathing,’ a group exhibition, at Kleinert/James Art Center
WOODSTOCK, N.Y. » “Forest Bathing,” a group exhibition about nature, is currently being showcased at the Kleinert/James Art Center, 34 Tinker St.
Forest bathing is a concept that originated in Japan in the 1980s as an antidote to an increasingly technological and alienating world. The idea is to mindfully walk in the woodlands and reconnect with the sounds, smells. colors and texture of nature. Forest bathing was prescribed by Japanese physicians as a medical cure to calm stressed nerves, mitigate pain and heal the soul.
The exhibition features artwork by Ashley Garrett, Anne Leith, Iain Machell, John Lyon Paul, Christy Rupp and Martin Weinstein. All six artists independently use the woodlands of upstate New York as a touchstone for very different and contemporary styles of painting and sculpture.
Garrett works from the memories of landscape in her mind. Her brushwork sparkles with captured filtered light of the forest with percussive sky blue patches and calm stone grey shadows. In Garrett’s work, viewers have the illusion of floating in a cacophony of mysterious spaces and colorful burrows where they can feel the joy and the struggle of creation. There is chaos and improvisation. But, like nature, there is a hidden geometrical organization and a perpetual balance between what is and is not.
Leith’s plein-air paintings are an exuberant expression of a will to create a greater organized whole from the chaos of nature. Leith’s mark-making velocity and vibrant colors (often accentuated with silver or gold leaf) race to capture the startling flashes of brilliant light found in the forest. Leith seeks to bend space and time with a vigorous response to the intimacy of the solitary self and its attentive relationship to the vastness of the Catskills.
Machell’s work explores the tactile presence and possibilities of paper as well as allowing fluid, organic influences in his mark-making media. Materials are bent, stressed and meticulously detailed to create a delicate cartography of space and being. There is a non-objective element to everything Machell makes but there is also a subtle bridge between the object itself and its position of a fractal microcosm of a greater world.
Paul’s reverse paintings on clear acrylic Plexiglas evoke ecclesiastical ornament with its glowing, fractured light. These luminous, colorful forms manifest the intangible, rendering clearly previously unseen realms. Paul’s vibrating pigments change with the ambient light, manifesting a multitude of shadows and infinite gem-like combinations. The two prayer wheels require the viewer’s participation to complete their purpose as the forms invite handson turning of a tree-like form to emulate the personal spiritual journey.
Rupp analyzes the dynamic connection between creatures, their distinctive purposes and the ominous threats to their habitats. In her wall sculptures of rainforest animals, Rupp etches welded and crafted animal forms with the molecular formulas that these frogs, ants and snakes contribute as healing pharmaceuticals for humans. In her Snap Shotcollages, Rupp dynamically blends the intrusions on woodland creatures and their ecosystems, creating a new environment that weaves both unnatural and natural worlds.
Weinstein’s paintings reference both the earth and the surrounding cosmos in perfect harmony. This balanced meeting of the inner and outer worlds is due to Weinstein’s technique of painting on three to five interlocking sheets of clear acrylic panels over a period of months to years. The clarity of these layered paintings only becomes apparent with the joinery of each incomplete translucent layer that records only a part of the visual story. Seen together as overlapping panels, the optical illusion of reality is perfect; yet slid away from one another. Each panel holds only a titillating fragment of the whole.
“Forest Bathing” runs through Sunday, Feb. 27. Gallery hours are Fridays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Visit https://www.woodstockguild.org/ or call (845) 679-2079 for more information.