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10 February > 31 March, 2021
Monica King Projects is pleased to present its inaugural virtual group exhibition Talismans, including works by a diverse range of artists centered around the theory of manifesting hope and magical energy through both the production and collecting of visual culture. The show will run simultaneously on the gallery’s website and Artsy page from February 10th to March 31st, 2021. Artists include Chellis Baird, Amy Chaiklin, Linda Colletta, Rachel Lee Hovnanian, Cindy Kleine, Juan Logan, April Marten, Livia Mourao, Erin Parsch, Katarra LaRae Peterson, Oswaldo Ruiz, Shavana Smiley, Charles Spurrier, Eric Stefanski, Francine Tint, Adam Umbach, Yana Ushakova, Rachael Wren, Mie Yim, and Sasha Yosselani.
As the world turned a profoundly tricky corner into 2021, one could feel the collective pressure being put upon the new year to be somehow markedly less heavy than the one that proceeded it. All hope seemed pinned to the future, rather than the present moment. When the first day of January did not readily produce instant solace for humanity, many people continued to turn to finding beauty, power, hope, and spiritual awakening in cultural objects both small and large, all of which embodied a new set of values in a tenuous global collective. Artists have, for centuries, manifested hope and the desire for change in their work. The collector of today perhaps seeks this shaman-like zeitgeist of cultural objects in a much more profound way than in the art world of a year ago.
This exhibition serves to elucidate the presence of Talismans, or objects thought to have magical powers and to bring good luck, as they often mirror the spiritual inner nature and reconciliation of chaos and harmony inherent in an artist’s work. While some works in this exhibition, such as those by Rachel Lee Hovnanian, April Marten, and Juan Logan were created with a direct sense of spiritual conjuring in mind, others seem to reveal this more subtly in their core of hope or lightness in a world often far too heavy.
