2023, Solo show, Bank, Shanghai
ex vivo (Latin: "out of the living") literally means that which takes place outside an organism. In science, ex vivo refers to experimentation done on tissue from an organism in an external environment with minimal alteration of natural conditions.[1]
This exhibition presents a series of works by the NYC-based artist Anastasia Komar (b.1986) that were partially made and assembled in China - an external environment, outside the context of her daily life and practice. Komar’s hybrid wall pieces explore entelechy, or the vital principle that guides the development and functioning of an organism or other systems of organization. Driven by vital force, living organisms replicate, modulate and evolve uncontrollably within their own self-consistent logic. But what happens outside of that paradigm?
Drawing inspiration from Vitalist theory, and from nature itself the artist imagines a futuristic mythology based on the principles of biological operation. The gauze-like brushstrokes on the grounding board are what the artist describes as the invisible substrate of the natural world, "not cells, but close-cropped views of some still as-of-yet undiscovered plane that organizes the world - an Aether”; while atop, venous glass polymers surround the panels like parasitical outgrowths. These ghostly and gaseous frosted tentacles stretch out of the boards like a physical extension of this aether, entrapping and enabling at the same time. Some of these sculptural components embrace the paintings, others confront them, composing a vital biological sphere onto itself.
Photography by bankmabsociety.com
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