Skip to content

Our Secret Fire

Contemporary Artists and the Alchemical Tradition

Sarah Braman, Louisa Chase, Lily Cox-Richard, Angela Fraleigh, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Jenny Morgan, Howardena Pindell, Zoe Pettijohn Schade, Elizabeth Turk

September 9 – October 8, 2021

a sculpture by Sarah Braman of a cabinet draw fused with multi-colored glass panels

Sarah Braman (b. 1970)

Her House, 2019

Desk parts, plywood and colored glass, 19 5/8 x 14 3/8 x 12 1/2 in.

© Sarah Braman; Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

a sculpture by Sarah Braman of a dining chair fused with multi-colored glass panels

Sarah Braman (b. 1970)

Paula, 2018

Wood, glass and chair, 43 x 23 3/4 x 24 1/4 in.

© Sarah Braman; Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

a bright yellow and blue sunset sits in a lushly-painted pink background with enfolded hands and arms hidden in the clouds

Louisa Chase (1951-2016)

Sunset Grip, 1983

Oil on canvas, 84 x 96 in.

an expressionistic painting by Louisa Chase of two black trees in a swirl of fire

Louisa Chase (1951-2016)

Untitled (Fire Study), 1983

Oil and wax on canvas, 22 x 26 inches

a sculpture by Lily Cox-Richard of cast tree bark with a green tongue-like form emerging from a knot in the center

Lily Cox-Richard (b. 1979)

Kindling (for our secret fire), 2021

Cast, modeled, and polished concrete aggregates (glass, stone, shells, gifted marbles, and other materials), 14 x 27 x 9 in.

a sculpture by Lily Cox-Richard of basket forms pressed together inside a shell of multicolored swirls

LIly Cox-Richard (b. 1979)

Weave, 2019

Scagliola (plaster, rabbit skin glue, and pigment), 14 3/4 x 17 x 14 1/2 in.

a painting by Angela Fraleigh of a close-crop view of a woman's face within a tangle of abstract colors and flowers

Angela Fraleigh (b. 1976)

Hollow Moon, 2014

Oil on linen, 14 x 11 in.

a painting by Angela Fraleigh of women from various art historical sources in a complex tangle of abstract color and plants

Angela Fraleigh (b. 1976)

You'll See Me from a Trillion Miles Away, 2019

Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in.

flattened birch bark in an irregularly shaped frame by artist Maria Elena Gonzalez

María Elena González

Bark Framed #5, 2012

Birch bark, permanent ink, ink on cardboard, 40 1/2 x 32 1/4 inches

a work on paper by Maria Elena Gonzalez combining a rubbing of birch bark with abstract elements like thick dash lines and green rectangles

María Elena González

T2 23-33, 2015

Graphite & inkjet on vellum on Japanese paper, 95 x 40 in.

a painting by Jenny Morgan of a face hidden by silky fabric and landscape

Jenny Morgan (b. 1982)

Anew, 2021

Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 in.

Courtesy the artist and Mother Gallery

a painting by Jenny Morgan of a fabric-like landscape folding over on itself

Jenny Morgan (b. 1982)

Dwelling, 2021

Oil on canvas, 22 x 17 in.

Courtesy the artist and Mother Gallery

a paper collage by Howardena Pindell made of circular, pink and purple paper punch-outs

Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)

Untitled #7G, 2009

Mixed media on paper collage, 9 3/4 x 8 in.

Courtesy the artist, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

a paper collage by Howardena Pindell made of circular, multi-colored paper punch-outs

Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)

Untitled #5, 2013

Mixed media on paper collage, 12 x 16 1/2 in.

Courtesy the artist, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

a paper collage by Howardena Pindell made of circular, multi-colored paper punch-outs

Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)

Rouge Planet, 2014

Mixed media on paper collage, 11 1/4 x 10 1/2 in.

Courtesy the artist, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

a drawing by Zoe Pettijohn Schade of a complex pattern created by multiple mirrors and reflections

Zoe Pettijohn Schade (b. 1973)

Mirrored Garden 1, 2018

Graphite on paper, 8 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.

Courtesy of the artist and Kai Matsumiya, New York

a drawing by Zoe Pettijohn Schade of a complex pattern created by multiple mirrors and reflections

Zoe Pettijohn Schade (b. 1973)

Mirrored Hand (moster), 2020

Graphite on paper, 8 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.

Courtesy of the artist and Kai Matsumiya, New York

a drawing by Zoe Pettijohn Schade of a complex pattern created by multiple mirrors and reflections

Zoe Pettijohn Schade (b. 1973)

Mirrored Thread 3, 2018

Graphite on paper, 8 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.

Courtesy of the artist and Kai Matsumiya, New York

a sculpture by Elizabeth Turk of a thin looping bands of marble, a corner of which is covered in gold leaf

Elizabeth Turk (b. 1961)

Scribble, 2020

Marble and 18K gold leaf, 3 x 12 1/4 x 4 3/4 in.

a hand-carved, abstract marble sculpture by Elizabeth Turk

Elizabeth Turk (b. 1961)

Script: Column #9, 2018

Marble, 56 1/2 x 10 x 10 in.

Press Release

One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.

                                                                     - Axiom of Maria [Mary the Jewess (fl. 1st, 2nd or 3rd c.)]

 

Transmutation is central to alchemy. This metamorphosis of matter requires pushing materials from one form into another in a succession until a final realization of purity is achieved. Purity is defined not as a “this” or a “that,” but as something that is a combination of its previous forms and yet something entirely new. Much more than “lead into gold,” alchemy is the pursuit of new understanding and new ideas through the manipulation of what already exists. This pursuit resonates strongly in Our Secret Fire, a group exhibition dedicated to nine artists whose work purposefully exists between states of being, caught in the act of metamorphosis. These artists utilize the shiftiness of the liminal state to explore ideas like domesticity, production and commodification, perception, and phenomenology. Their materials, whether physical or conceptual, can be pushed into any number of forms by the viewer or by the artist herself to both inform and surprise. This is the transmutation the alchemists sought. The artists in Our Secret Fire bring it forward.

Sarah Braman’s sculptures fuse the quotidian forms of a chair and a cabinet drawer with blocks of pure color, culminating in objects which transcend their domesticity to rapturous levels of sensory experience. This phenomenological investigation overlaps with the paintings of Louisa Chase, whose narrative-driven works from the early 1980s seek to explain her own emotional state through nature-based imagery. The resulting canvases are expressionistic metaphors for the human condition. Jenny Morgan’s paintings carry the same weight without the overt materiality of Chase’s paint handling. In her richly layered paintings that swing between portrait and landscape, Morgan subtly places the human form within sensual passages of fabric and forest. Angela Fraleigh’s paintings lean into their alchemical nature through both imagery and process. Her deep, brooding abstract atmospheres are interstitial spaces achieved through Fraleigh’s process of pouring, dripping and pooling swirls of lush, liquid pigment. Within these undulating mists, depictions of women drawn from art historical sources but removed from their original context materialize before the viewer full of power and magic.

In her process-driven practice, Howardena Pindell mines the metaphors surrounding destruction and construction. Her collages, built-up of circular, paper punch-outs from sheets on which she has drawn and painted, point to the necessary destruction and sacrifice within cosmology and universe building. María Elena González’s exploration of the visual overlap between birch bark and musical notation is modern day alchemy in the strictest sense. By moving through various states of being, from bark to rubbings to notation to player-piano scroll, González reveals the purity of the birch tree is its inherently individual song. Lily Cox-Richard’s amorphous sculptures, built of oozing materials and plaster casts of baskets and trees, look as though disparate objects are melting together when in truth the artist employs a traceable conceptual progression. Each aesthetic element references a specific, real-world issue between commodification and production, both historically and contemporaneously. The breakdown between beautiful form and saddening content underscores just how underrecognized these issues are. The marble sculptures of Elizabeth Turk highlight how nature has shaped organic materials long before any artist’s manipulation. Through her carving, she pushes the material to its physical limit and exposes the provocative tension between the marble’s intrinsic strength and its inherent fragility. Zoe Pettijohn Schade’s drawings operate on the edge between subject and object, between abstraction and representation. Her tightly rendered observations of mirrors and subsequent reflections are based on utopian ideals of self-assembly. As the reflections compound to make evermore intricate designs, Schade’s imagery moves beyond straightforward representation towards complex abstract patterning. Like a true alchemist, she forces her drawings from one state of being into another to find the purity located within.

Back To Top