Garden of Delights

Winston Wächter Fine Art is pleased to present the group exhibition, Garden of Delights, featuring work by Rachel Denny, Katherine Gray, Mark Licari and Erich Woll, curated by art consultant Dena Rigby.

This exhibition reveals a strange tension between man and the attempt to control the environment and its natural rhythms. Whimsy and humor are used to address underlying unease of potential environmental change. The playful quality of the show celebrates a world of handcrafted magic, yet belies an underlying peculiar sense of unnaturalness.

Artist Rachel Denny explores the unexpected and absurd moment when human activity and the natural world intersect. In her work "Fuchsia Buck," a mounted deer head is kept warm and precious in a custom-knit fuchsia sweater. The unfortunate buck finds itself as a trophy displayed by a proud hunter in all its fuzzy warm glory.

Other curious hybrids are explored in the work of Erich Woll, whose glass squirrels live a checkered life as both pest and wise sage. In, "It Takes Ten Squirrels to Make a Squirrel Pie," Woll has created a ring of squirrels ceremoniously presenting shotgun shells in what appears as some sort of archaic religious ceremony.

The moody watercolors of Mark Licari present an out-of-control world in which the relationship between nature and man is at odds and intertwined at the same time. Licariís ìSteroid Mothî has evolved after generations of attack into a strangely buffed attack moth.

Conversely, Katherine Gray's "Tabletopiarie" are inspired by the highly manicured topiary of Versailles. Grayís renditions however, are more exquisitely designed in a modern Baroque style, executed in a Venetian glassblowing style.