Into the Woods

As the trees grow denser and the foliage blocks out the sun, you had better keep your wits about you; the forest can be quite an unfamiliar place. In the thick darkness of a bramble’s shade, or the sweet moisture of a willow’s bell, strange happenings begin to occur. A wanderer may lose themselves in a disorienting maze, as the towering groves reveal their old secrets, only to find themselves recalling memories long forgotten.

Make Room is proud to present Into the Woods, A group show of works from artists, each exploring a unique notion of the woods. We bring these artists together to capture The Sublime that one finds when you leave the static of urban society. The feeling created by the power and vastness of natural greatness, a feeling of awe, wonder and terror. Rather than approaching this feeling from the tradition of classical romanticism, this show puts together The Sublime of the forest in fragments of abstraction. 

The forest has long held a cultural identity as a place of both mystery and homecoming. There is a nostalgic familiarity to the cathedral of trees. There is a warmth in the smells and the ground is soft under your feet, but even if it is our primordial home it is unknown to us now. This contradiction appears within these pieces, without words, or necessarily imagery of the forest itself. As a central figure of the show, Bai Yiyi’s paintings create a fluid abstraction of dappled light filtering across grasses and beads that are obscured by texture. These paintings evoke a calm feeling yet hold onto this sense of confusion and mystery; The feeling remains veiled. This feeling can be seen in the eyes of a Johanna Bath portrait, Pia Ortuño’s abstractions or one of Dylan Doe’s nearly-human figures.

Mother Nature takes the archetype of both the nurturing caretaker, as well as the nymphlike temptress. This feeling of the woods is presented in both the allure and the comfort of the feminine identity as it spans across generations. Much of this show pulls from this feminine heritage of craftsmanship and protection as well as delicate beauty. As with Malaika Temba’s piece Fragment 2; the art of textile making and weaving holds a long tradition of feminine care. A sturdy material made through the careful structuring of fragile thread. Like a grandmother teaching a child to weave, the forest imparts lessons of our natural world. The femininity of the forest can be seen across the body of work from the curves of nature in Camilla Engstrom’s paintings, to the bathing scenes in Tuan Vu radiant forest.

The show also holds the more concrete representations of nature, the imagery of flora and fauna. Artists like Qian Qian and world renowned Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama, create fantastical imagery of the smallest creatures in the forest. Azadeh Elmizadeh uses expressive colors to capture the transitions of the forest and the way an autumn leaf can turn to flame. Then Zhi Dang captures the forest at night, lonesome and cold as opposed to Zoe Koke’s paintings of the green light that filters the day’s sun through a layer of leaves.        

Into the Woods brings together artists across the world and across multiple generations to explore the emotional identity of the woods separate from the simple depiction of the trees as objects in the landscape. The forest holds a spiritual identity that we all connect with in some way. Taking time in nature is transformative in many of the same ways that spending time with art can be. In a time when both the future of art institutions as well as the future of our natural spaces is unpredictable, we must make an effort to maintain them for future generations.