Between layers

What is hidden, processed, or recorded through layering? What resides between layers of paint, sound, or digital fragments? The works of Marissa Sean Cruz, Ryth Kesselring, and Wendy-Alexina Vancol tap into notions of intimacy, relationships, and principles of co-existence via a stratified visual language. 

The interactive installation Sonic Textiles by Ryth Kesselring invites the public to choreograph their presence in the gallery space. Made of textile speakers and microphones, this work situates the audience as interlocutors, who are called to immerse themselves in a soundscape of embroidery machine noises and cumulated audio traces of past visitors. Sensors embedded in the work are activated via physical movement and voices, all recorded to become a collecting and ever-evolving soundtrack, instituting a sense of interconnectedness. The layering of sound acts as a sort of time portal that records bodies and misconnections. 

In Wendy-Alexina Vancol's painting As Tall as a Tree, smooth and even acrylic coatings were gently applied onto the canvas. The viewer can perceive the labor of care poured in the work via the color palette's softness and captured light, delicate strokes, and attention to detail. Vancol's piece recounts the emotional processing that occurs when a close relationship shifts and matures. The artist gesturally journals contrasting feelings such as nostalgia, loss, uncertainty, acceptance, and wonder as she witnesses her sibling, Joshua, blossoming into adulthood. 

Musings about the nature of relationship-building take a darker tone in Marissa Sean Cruz's multidisciplinary video performance PLAY(ing in my) PEN(ding doom). Through their mise-en-scène, Cruz critically examines the kinship shared with dogs, who are perceived as loyal and devoted companions, existing in our collective imagination as the perfect partner, one that would never abandon or disappoint. These emotional projections become particularly uncomfortable when the artist appears on screen as a cosplay version of a battery-operated pink plushy dog toy and then juxtaposed with footage of Boston Dynamics' four-legged robots. These canine-inspired and military-oriented machines demonstrate a persisting desire to institute this peculiar inter-species dynamic as a relational model.  

- Geneviève Wallen, Exhibition Coordinator