Talley Dunn Gallery is honored to announce
Sun Dogs, a solo exhibition of acclaimed Houston-based artist Natasha Bowdoin. Renowned for her sprawling and lush collage-based works and installations teeming with natural abundance, Bowdoin presents her most recent captivating wall-mounted works in this newest exhibition at the gallery. The artist paints with bright primary colors and soft pastels on cut wood to create clustered and cascading forms of vivacious floral and vine-like vegetation that, despite their earthly roots, are also evocative of the celestial. The exhibition’s title,
Sun Dogs, references the visual phenomenon of spots of bright light that appear next to the Sun. These “mock” suns are the result of sunlight refracting off atmospheric ice crystals. Etymologically deriving from ancient mythologies, sun dogs came to be called as such as they were seen as heavenly dogs or wolves. Like sun dogs, Bowdoin’s works engage with the natural world not only as it exists, but also in the various ways it is imagined. Finding splendor in the liminal spaces between fact and fiction, science and affect, and what is animate and inanimate; Bowdoin’s thriving and generative forms call us to reconsider our relationships to nature in new lights.
This exhibition features works from a new series Posy where layers of individually cut pieces of painted wood are dynamically arranged in organically unfurling assemblages. The depth and intricacy of these works lend them a sculptural quality that is mesmerizingly immersive, inviting viewers to pause and let their eyes joyously wander. Along with works from the Posy series, the exhibition also features two larger framed works Sun Garden and Thicket. Reminiscent of multivalent points in time and space, ranging from centuries-old botanical illustrations to retro design aesthetics of the 1980s, all of Bowdoin’s works capture the lively and transformative power of nature that disavows easy classification, and compels viewers to question how we make sense of ourselves and the world around us.
