Juxtapoz Magazine – Lena Gustafson Explores “Flooded Channels” @ pt.2 Gallery, Oakland

Painter and printmaker Lena Gustafson’s second solo exhibition with pt.2 Gallery, Flooded Channels, will be demonstrated from July 8—August 5, 2022. Flooded Channels represents a branching of Gustafson’s portray and printmaking exercise, growing on her ongoing investigations of transformation, repression, sequential evolution, and the sensations of dwelling in a entire body. The title refers to both equally bodies of drinking water in the normal environment, and corporal units, which can be remarkably very similar in condition and functionality, these as how pieces of the cardiovascular process mirror the kind of estuaries foremost to the sea. 

The perform in Flooded Channels tries to express the sensation of currently being prevail over by contradictory emotions—such as grief and joy. The works grapple with the existence of many realities, which normally exist in concurrent relation and contradiction to 1 yet another. Rather than isolating every of these realities, Gustafson examines what lies at their interference. The functions dive into the overlapping room of the in-between, an assessment of its ebbs and flows. 

Gustafson’s the latest function flows similarly involving her painting and printmaking practices via her application of display printing techniques to her paintings. Rather than portray with the viewpoint of separate fore-, mid-, and backgrounds, the picture is flattened onto a solitary visual aircraft, offered as a sole stratum. By flattening the provided visible facts, Gustafson gives a metaphor for the overlapping realities that our bodies occupy.  —Claire Mullen