“Soft Fascination” 

September 7 through October 28, 2019

with:

Jolynn Krystosek

Heidi Norton

Erin LaRocque

Elijah Wheat Showroom presents a group exhibition of multi-media works from three American artists entitled “Soft Fascination.” These artists create with natural and biological elements at the center of their focus. Coined by the environmental psychologist duo of Kaplan & Kaplan, the title phrase suggests that through “Attention Restoration Therapy (ART)” humans are able to benefit from a subtle focus of nature, opposed to a directed attention with their environment. 

By being present within the natural mystery of symmetry, curiosity, and wonder within the wilderness, one is capable of experiencing profound, yet non-grandiose, patterns, shapes, colors, sounds and elements. These elements bring a flow of tranquility without a deliberate focus of health and wellness. And consequently, the prescription for healing is determined to be a subconscious yet awe inspiring product of being unencumbered by the directed attention that the urban and now digital environment requires. 

Jolynn Krystosek’s work focuses on a fascination with the natural world. The objects on display range from slip cast porcelain dead flowers and pods to gilded found bones and sea-shells. Together, they create a strange fusion of the natural and the obvious human hand of constructed sculptures. The outcome fuses traditional craftsmanship and botanicals. The temporal nature of the subject matter, coupled with an uncustomary use of a variety of materials, heightens the relationship between the physicality of the works and the viewers’ own corporeality. 

Panels of manipulated glass by Heidi Norton stand central in the space. Panes are embedded with cellular detritus, bio-science test-tubes, dying plant life, and preserved organic materials.  She states that as “a child of New Age homesteaders in West Virginia, her interests resulted in a strong connection to the land, plant life and nature.” Working from a place of installation and then documenting her ephemeral configurations of living materials, Norton’s photographs have a particular place within the discourse of contemporary photography as she preserves her sculpture to actuate skillful photographic compositions. The textures reveal a painterly display of stagnant foliage, frozen within a second dimension. Working within this plateau,  the outcome is multi-dimensional. Norton continues to intrigue with new sculptures and their photographic counterpoints.

The primary materials Erin LaRocque uses to create her living tapestries are made from Ganoderma Lucidum (Reishi) Mycelium mushrooms growing to her specifications and acute care. She states that “these self-weaving, collaborative medicinal tapestries are personal gardens to cultivate beneficial compounds that can be consumed to improve one’s health and wellbeing, and sites to provide therapeutic “soft fascination” in an urban ecosystem. We provide resources to help each other survive, and when the tapestry completes its life cycle, its physical remains can be harvested to provide resources for human health, or reserved as an object of compassionate decor.” The gallery and the artist will also collaborate on CBD & Reishi tinctures as a nominally priced take-away from the exhibition. LaRocque presents work that is “informed by science, pseudo-science, aspirational self-help rituals, and fate.” The artist uses mushrooms as agents of decay and simultaneous regeneration. With this medium, LaRocque “sparks conversations about the sustainability of body and the environment, and the futility of trying to maintain youth and good health. These tapestries serve to amuse and console, ask us to experience an alternate reality, contemplate the definition of cooperation, and accept destiny and chance.”  

Elijah Wheat Showroom delivers an adaptive, growing display of organic materials alongside sculptures and mark-making derived from once pluming, yet now decaying objects to enjoy as a “Soft Fascination” indoors. Please join us and the artists for an opening reception Saturday, September 7th from 6:00PM to 9:00PM. The show will run through  Sunday, October 28th during regular hours, Saturday & Sunday noon-6pm and by appt.

Jolynn Krystosek (American, b. 1981) received her BFA from San Francisco State University in San Francisco, California and her MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. She has exhibited throughout the United States including solo exhibitions at Lux Art Institute, Philadelphia Art Alliance, and The Horticultural Society of New York. Her work has recently been exhibited at Casey Kaplan Gallery, Storefront Bushwick, Racine Art Museum, and the Islip Art Museum. Jolynn’s work has been featured in publications including Surface Magazine, NY Arts Magazine, San Diego Union Tribune, the North County Times, the Shepard Express, and KPBS.

Heidi Norton (American, b.1977) is a New York based artist. A recent feature in Art21’s Revolution issue Homesteading as Art and Revolution presents her upbringing and relationship to nature in her art. Norton mounted a large early career site responsive exhibition, Prismatic Nature, at Elmhurst Art Museum where she received a generous grant from the Illinois Art Council to serve as Artist in Residence. There she had the opportunity to curate the McCormick House -- one of three Mies van der Rohe’s residential homes in the United States. In an interview for BOMB magazine discusses the ethics of plants and differentiates between the terms "nature" and "ecology." In 2013, Norton traveled to Bourges, France to participate in the exhibition Ghost Nature at the National School of the Arts. There she researched the natural water structures, primarily concentrating on the marsh systems. Those studies were focused into a large installation that traveled to University of Illinois at Chicago, Gallery 400. Norton’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art received much critical acclaim. Her writings and work are included in Art21, BOMB Magazine, Journal for Artistic Research, Grafts by Michael Marder, and newly released, Why Look at Plants ed. by Giovanni Aloi. Her most recent illustrated essay, The Faceless Plant: A Sketch for Timothy Morton, is in a recent issue of BOMB Magazine. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago, Unilever Corporation, the Joyce Foundation and numerous private collections. She is currently a professor at the International Center of Photography and FIT.

Erin LaRocque (American, b. 1983) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Earning an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2019 and prior, a BFA in Painting, from the Gwen Frostic School of Art, Western Michigan University, 2006. She collaborates with non-human agents that utilize weaving as a natural part of their life cycle to make tapestries that reference the passage of time and the ways humans perceive, use, and appreciate nature. A decade of growing mushrooms and an interest in biology and patterns in nature- both visual and cyclical, led to this ongoing project. Her work has been collected by the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and by the Michigan State Capital building in Lansing, MI.