Nightshades at Polansky Gallery

Artists: Rebecca Ackroyd, Julia Colavita, Monika Grabuschnigg, Maren Karlson, Martin Maeller, Sandra Vaka Olsen

Exhibition title: Nightshades

Curated by: Christina Gigliotti

Venue: Polansky Gallery, Brno, The Czech Republic

Date: March 14 – April 27, 2019

Photography: Jan Kolsky / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Polansky Gallery, Brno

Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully ploughed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair and costume, for a fissure through which to explode.

– Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love, 1954

This exhibition is in the same breath self-destructing and reviving–piecing together what’s left. It mourns; choking on the fumes of singed plastic waste. It scuttles; away from the rubble in search of halcyon estuaries.

Nightshades are mythologized to blossom only at night. In shadows and crevices they creep and shiver, opening themselves to the thick tenebrous air.

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Sandra Vaka Olsen, Jugs (guarana antarctica) , 2017 and Jugs (surge) , 2017

Rebecca Ackroyd, Hunter/Gatherer v , 2018

Rebecca Ackroyd, Hunter/Gatherer v , detail 2018

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Rebecca Ackroyd, Hunter/Gatherer vii , 2018

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Rebecca Ackroyd, Hunter/Gatherer iii , 2018

Rebecca Ackroyd, Hunter/Gatherer iii , detail, 2018

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Martin Maeller, energetic decomposition , 2019

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Rebecca Ackroyd, Hunter/Gatherer iv , 2018

Rebecca Ackroyd, Hunter/Gatherer iv , detail, 2018

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Sandra Vaka Olsen, Cloud (raspberry connections) 2017 and Cloud (beer), 2017

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Rebecca Ackroyd, Hunter/Gatherer viii , detail, 2018

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Julia Colavita, Speech Effects , detail, 2018

Martin Maeller, outlast (2) , 2018/2019

Martin Maeller, outlast (2) , detail, 2018/2019

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Monika Grabuschnigg, (from left) Crash ( Simulation 3), Crash (Simulation 4), Crash (Simulation 2), 2019

Monika Grabuschnigg, Crash (Simulation 4) , 2019

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019

Maren Karlson, Space Crone Suit , 2019

Monika Grabuschnigg, New Fire – Hardware for the Real , 2019

Monika Grabuschnigg, New Fire – Hardware for the Real , detail, 2019

Nightshades, Installation View, Polansky Gallery, 2019