Marius
Andre
Sculpture. Wall Hanging. Video. Curation.
Logging the Enchanted Forest
Gelman Gallery 03/07/2025-04/20/2025
Featured Artists
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Palm Paramee Panchaphalasom Rainer Gardner-Olesen Leah LiuSuzy Kim Cindy Zhaoyue Chen Tanaya Henson Kyle Gyumin Dong |
| Avery Guo Maddie Scalere Sophie Bugat Aiden Keane Seung Ho Jeon Kayla Carabes Kira Saks |
| Nana Lee Nicole Altan Siyu Lei Rebecca Stevens Rachel Broihier Cayden Garrett Brendan Krue |
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Max Doulis Channing Christ Samuel Webster Ali Sutton Mandy Zhang Marius Andre |
Curatorial Statement
The enchanted forest, an oasis of nature, is alive and full of interconnected and irrational relationships that exude magic and life, tales that defy explanation. However, we have been slowly logging the enchanted forest since the industrial revolution - physically degrading and urbanizing our environment. We also log the enchanted forest in our psyche via scientific naturalism, positivism, and human-nature dualism. We compulsively rationalize all our relationships with the world, leaving no space for the subjective. The title’s double meaning reflects the duality present within the exhibition, the forest’s simultaneous preservation and destruction. The exhibition itself acts as a log for all the wonder that exists within our world, recording and reflecting the enchanted forest, while at the same time gives witness to its continual logging and our increasing disenchantment with the more-than-human world.
This exhibition collects works relating to technology, modernity, and information disenchanting us with the natural world. Adapting Walter Benjamin’s concept of aura from his influential essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, this exhibition positions nature as the ultimate example of aura - completely unique. In the age of information fact has replaced narrative, purging the unknown and the auratic. No longer do stories, like fairy tales and myth, inform the unique relationships entangling us with the world. Information is unable to carry the smell of the rain or the bite of a cool breeze - it cannot hold within it your unique experience. Instead constant access to facts and mechanical reproductions have stripped the irrational world of its aura and mystery. Sanitized rational, informational, and fabricated relationships have replaced a vibrant world full of narrative, subjectivity, and life.
The pieces within this exhibition explore the processes that lead to the logging of the enchanted forest. Works such as, “Closer to the Bone”, by Kyle Dong (Photography MFA 26’) employ direct, reproducible depictions that reflect our disenchantment while, “On the Banks, Will She Become a Swan”, by Ali Sutton (Illustration BFA 25’) examines medieval tales of human relationships with nature. Some works such as, “it always does”, by Nana Lee (Sculpture BFA 27’) capture the enchanted forest through irrational relationships and narrative, conveying the aura and magic of the natural world. Finally there are works such as “Who would I become in an alternate universe” by Paramee Panchaphalasom (Furniture BFA 25’) that echo the aura of the enchanted forest through interactivity and chance, re-enchanting us with the world.
Art and the stories we tell remain one of the last ways of re-enchanting the forest, re-entangling us in the experience of something without an attempt to explain and rationalize it. Chance processes, obscure relationships, and storytelling can create auratic space allowing the audience to fill in the gaps of uncertainty. We let wonder whisk us away from the gallery to the enchanted forest once again.
- Marius Mathias Soldal Andre