Artist Whitney Bedford's exhibition presents a collection of new paintings, alongside collaborative outcomes, produced with artist Dane Mitchell in the form of works on paper, intimate sculptures and a scent — all of which act as votives and conduits of the elusive moment when things shift or become ungraspable through distance — these multiple outcomes track the amorphous act of a storm gathering and distances expanding.
In her new paintings Bedford becomes fixated on lightning as a moment of charged realization. These intense fleeting moments — where things are subject to dramatic change are revealed and reveled in through the various/myriad properties of light.
Finally, the artists Bedford and Mitchell collaborated to produce a scent as a 'thought object' based on these same properties. Dane Mitchell often makes use of intangible materials and forces in his work. From dust, scent, and light, to the channeling of spirits, his work has often conjured the conceptual through magic — to which Bedford is also drawn.
Through a shared interest in votives, fleeting moments, shifting objects and amorphous forms they came to the idea of a scent that would act like a gestalt — something bigger than the sum of its parts, both like a storm and a plume of perfume.
Bedford and Mitchell worked with famed French perfumer Michel Roudnitska to produce a scent that would act as a conduit to distill or to quantify vast distances. The scent contains molecules of ambergris collected from the belly of a whale, of seaweed dense ocean, and ozonic electrical notes of a gathering storm. This distillation acts as a spell to evoke a shifting change.
Alongside these collaborative outcomes, Bedford will also exhibit a set of ceramic replicas of her eyes as votives. Although the set of eyes do not function — they see forward through anxious times.
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